When spring rolls around, with it comes one of the biggest holidays of the calendar year: Easter. It’s a holiday for the family but just because you chose not to celebrate Easter doesn’t mean you can’t still make the day all about your loved ones with a family activity.
There are plenty of ways to spend quality time together in lieu of observing Easter. Here are a few of our favorite family bonding activities perfect for subbing in on this spring holiday.
1. Enjoy an Easter feast
Just because you don’t observe Easter, doesn’t mean you have to avoid any mention of it. That opens the door to, well, practically any local restaurant. Easter falls on a Sunday when most people file out of church with a hearty appetite. So most eateries will offer some sort of special menu or discounted dining in honor of the holiday.
Plus, you can actually focus on catching up with your partner and kids, because you won’t have the looming stress of knowing there’s a big pile of dishes waiting for you after the meal.
2. Go to the movies
For some families, there’s no better outing than hitting the cinema to watch the latest blockbuster or Disney film. If that sounds like your family, make a movie date your annual Easter Sunday tradition. The crowds should be low early in the day when potential moviegoers will still be in church or at lunch. You’ll get matinee pricing, plus you won’t have to wait roughly a million years for a refill on your drinks.
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3. Start a garden
What better way to spend a beautiful spring day than in the garden? This is a great family activity to honor the new life and growth this season symbolizes, but it’s also a fantastic way to get in some quality time with your kids. You can even sneak in a few valuable life lessons about hard work and reaping what you sow.
Get them excited by letting them pick out seeds and be hands-on with the planting process. The best part, of course, is that starting a garden on Easter Sunday means you’ll have a built-in bonding activity with your kids that will last all year.
4. Go geocaching
Move over, Easter eggs! Consider searching for a different hidden treasure by taking your family geocaching. In case you’re new to this adventurous activity, here’s the rundown. All you have to do to start is register (it’s free) and visit Geocaching.com’s “Hide & Seek a Cache” page. From there, you’ll enter your postal code and pick a geocache from the local list. Once you enter the coordinates of the geocache into your GPS device, you’re off!
Your GPS will help guide you to a set location, where you’ll try to find a tiny treasure — a trinket special to the player who left it. You’ll sign the logbook, share your geocaching story online and, ultimately, have tons of fun as a treasure-hunting family.
5. Take a farm tour or visit a petting zoo
Most of us live within an hour or two of at least one farm, many of which offer an impressive array of family activities. There isn’t a more ideal time to visit since, as we all know, spring ushers in new life. Your kids will adore cooing over all the cuddly, fuzzy babies frolicking around, and they may even get to hold a few, too.
6. Embark on a park tour
We don’t know about you, but our kids can’t get enough time at parks and playgrounds. But we all have defaults we always go to because they’re close or familiar. Well, make this the day you map out the local parks and let your little ones test them all out.
If your kids are a little older, you can focus on parks that aren’t built around playgrounds, like nature conservancies or even skate parks. Maybe you’ll find a hidden gem! No matter what, you’ll head home with some tuckered-out kids ready for a good night’s sleep. That’s definitely cause for celebration.
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7. Make your own tradition
Who says you can’t have your own festivities, in your own way? What’s great about this idea is that it’s all about you as a family. What’s your favorite thing to do together? How can you make this day stand out each year? Maybe it’s as simple as ordering pizza and having an epic board game marathon. Or perhaps it’s something that honors your family history.
Have fun coming up with a holiday significant enough to — and fun enough for — every member of the fam. And while others are rushing out to buy Easter baskets, you’ll smile knowing you have something unique of your own to celebrate (that, hopefully, doesn’t entail boiling three dozen eggs).