Family Experience Gift Ideas (Gifts for Kids)

Sick of Christmas being a time of chaos and toy clutter? I’ve been there too.

This is your complete guide to screen free gifts for kids. Check out our tried and true favorites to eliminate stress this holiday season.

In this post you will find…

• Family experience gift ideas
• Activity gifts your kids will love
• Kid gift experiences
• Cool things for boys
• Girly gifts
• Simple gifts for kids (young and old)
• Fun Christmas gift traditions for families

If you are craving a laid back, screen-free holiday full of family experiences your kids will actually remember, this post is for you.

Family Experience Gift Ideas

Family gift experiences have been some of our favorite Christmas presents we’ve ever received. One year, my husband’s sister gave each of our kids a selection of unique gift cards for us to use on one-on-one dates with them. Our kids absolutely loved these quality time outings. Experiences often mean more to a child than material things.

Quality Time Date Coupons

In our home, my husband and I each alternate taking one child on a quality time date once a month. By the end of the year, our three big kids have each gotten four one-on-one dates (two with Dad and two with Mom). We write these on the calendar in Sharpie and look forward to them all month long!

Give each of your kids a calendar and mark off one day every other month that you or your spouse will take them on a quality time date. Or simply mark off the months that you intend to take them out if you have a child who particularly struggles when plans need to change last minute. Include gift cards with a variety of dollar amounts to places like…

• Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks ($10)
• Ice cream shop ($10)
• Fast Food Lunch Spots ($15)
• Favorite  Dinner Restaurants ($25)
• Smoothie Café ($12)
• Trampoline Park ($20)

You can also include coupons to free places that you will go together such as…

• Hike in the woods
• Feed the ducks
• Free museums
• Library
• Local horse farm
• Outdoor gardens  
• Playground
• State Park

Quality time is one of the best family experience gifts you can give. Every year since we got married, my parents have given my husband and I a $100 gift card to our favorite steakhouse.

This is my favorite Christmas gift every year. It never gets boring to me.

My parents’ generosity has meant that my husband and I have gotten two sweet dates to spend quality time together every winter. 

Family Memberships

Hungry for authentic connection with your loved ones? Unplug from the virtual world and try these family experience gift ideas that your crew can enjoy together all year long.

• Membership to an indoor play gym for kids
• Membership to an indoor swimming pool
• Membership in an indoor trampoline park
• Membership to your local aquarium
• Membership to your local zoo
• Membership to local museums
• Membership to indoor skating ring plus skates
• Membership to a local ski resort for skiing, snowboarding, snowtubing, and ice-skating

More Family Experience Gift Ideas

Here are some family gift experience ideas for fun trip plans you can give your family during Christmas time to look forward to at a later date. Be sure to print tickets and info describing the places you will go. Wrap these in a nice box.

• Tickets to an amusement park
• Tickets to a Broadway play
• Concert tickets to a band you all appreciate
• A weekend camping trip plus supplies (tents, sleeping bags, cooler)
• Reservations at Colonial Williamsburg (pair this gift with the book Traitor in Williamsburg: A Felicity Mystery by Elizabeth M. Jones)
• A trip to Great Wolf Lodge
• Hotel reservations to a spot on the beach plus supplies (goggles, boogie boards, sand castle buckets, shovels, sand dipper for seashell collecting, water shoes)
• Plane tickets to somewhere your family has never been before
• A family cruise

Activity Gifts

Want to keep your family close to home and do some fun bonding activities? Family experience gifts don’t have to be expensive to be enjoyable. Here are some great activity gifts for kids that you can do locally as a family.  

• Gift certificate to a short weekend cake decorating class at your local bake shop
• Money or gift card toward a day at local paintballing
• Money or gift card toward a day at your local go cart track
• Money toward a Horse n’ Buggy ride at the closest Amish Country to you
• Gift card to a family friendly restaurant (Texas Roadhouse has kid’s night once a week)
• Gift card to an evening at your local mini golf spot
• Gift card to your local museums (art museum, historical museum, science museum)  
• Gift card to pottery painting
• Money towards a day at the shooting range
• Tickets to local baseball game
• Tickets to local basketball game
• Tickets to local football game
• Tickets to local soccer game

Family Gift Experiences

Some family gift experiences can be enjoyed right from the comfort of your own home. In our house, board games have been a favorite way to bond and connect as a family without screen time.

Instead of a movie night, sometimes we put the little ones to bed and then play a couple rounds of board games with the big kids over a bowl of popcorn and chocolate chips.

Grab a few of these board games to gift your family a memorable experience together this holiday season.

• Candy Land
• Charades for Kids
• Checkers
• Chess
• Chutes and Ladders
• Clue Junior
• Connect 4
• Exploding Kittens
• Guess Who
• Hi Ho Cherry-O
• Jenga
• Kingdomino
• Life Junior
• Life
• Monopoly Junior
• Monopoly
• Pit
• Scrabble Junior
• Scrabble
• Scout It Out
• Skip Bo
• Sleeping Queens
• Sorry
• Ticket to Ride
• Twister
• Uno

Need help connecting with your kids without screen time? Grab my free printable Screen Free Family Bingo here!

Simple Family Gift Experience Ideas

This wouldn’t be me writing if I didn’t mention reading aloud. It is my absolute favorite thing to do with my kids and it is their favorite thing to do with me. Reading aloud with children is a bonding family experience that you don’t want to miss out on, no matter what age your child is. Here are 6 great books you can purchase as gifts to read aloud to your elementary aged children…

1. Baby Island by Carole Ryrie Brink
2. Escape from Baxter’s Barn by Rebecca Bond
3. A True Home (Heartwood Hotel, Book 1) by Kallie George
4. Classic Starts Five Little Peppers and How They Grew  
5. Summer With The Moody’s by Sarah Maxwell
6. Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Need help breaking your child’s screen addiction and making reading fun again? Read this post:

Make Reading Fun for Kids

Kid Gift Experiences

Some of the very best gifts for kids don’t come in a plastic box. Kid gift experiences will last in your child’s memory long after Christmas morning.

Money Toward Summer Camp

I have a friend who split the cost with a grandparent and gifted her 2^nd grader two weeks at a daytime summer camp. I thought this was a fabulous idea! Summer camp is expensive, but you can usually get a discounted rate if you purchase it in the winter months.

Camp is a kids gift experience that older elementary, middle, and high school kids will be able to appreciate and look forward to, even if it is several months down the line.

If you gift your kid a summer camp experience, be sure to print out the tickets, photos, and details about the camp and wrap it up in a box for them to find out about on Christmas morning.

Here are some types of summer camps you could look into for your child and simple, screen free gifts you can include in their summer camp Christmas gift box:

• Art Camp (Pair with oil pastels, paints, and a blank white canvas)
• Aviation Camp (Pair with a toy model airplane)
• Dance Camp (Pair with a set of new ballet flats)
• Drama Camp (Pair with an authentic play script, a Shakespeare book, Shakespeare for Children audio CD by Jim Weiss, and some theatre makeup)
• Horse camp (Pair with a set of toy horse, horse stickers, a helmet, and riding boots)
• Science camp (Pair with kids science safety goggles)
• Sports Camp (Pair with a brand new soccer ball)
• Traditional summer camp with water fun (Pair with a new swimsuit, goggles, and a t-shirt from the camp)

Delicious Gift Cards

Most kids consider fast food a yummy treat that they don’t get to enjoy on the regular. Also, kids feel mature when they get to pay for something on their own.

A while ago, a dear friend gifted our three year old five Chic-fil-A gift cards with $10 each on them. Our little one was supposed to take each of her family members out on a little one-on-one milkshake date throughout the year. What a sweet idea.

Our preschooler lit up over this gift. She took great pride in getting to hand the cashier her gift card and pay when we went on our family date.

Here are some fast food gift cards kids would love to receive at Christmas time:

• $10 McDonalds gift card
• $10 Chic-fil-A gift card
• $10 Frozen Yogurt Shop gift card
• $10 Ice Cream Shop gift card

Money Toward Extracurricular Activities

In our home, extracurricular activities are not an automatic. We don’t sign every child up for something every season. We have found that too many time commitments take away from the things we value most as a family. But, every once in a while, we sign one child up for something for one season.

Here are some activity gifts you could give your kids on their birthday, at Christmas, or during other holidays:

• A year of horse riding lessons
• A winter session of basketball
• A session of swimming lessons
• A year of musical instrument lessons
• A season of karate or taekwondo lessons
• Knitting or crochet lessons at your local yarn shop
• Cake decorating or baking classes at your local bakery
• Enrollment in a short summer session of sports such as flag football, golf, soccer, or volleyball

Screen Free Gifts for Kids

If you are sick of loud, flashy toys that your kids get bored with shortly after opening, use this screen free guide to gifts for kids.

Grab kids gift ideas for birthdays, Christmas, and other holidays from this list so that your child can entertain themselves without electronic devices.

Obviously both girls and boys can enjoy many of the things on the separate lists below, but these are organized by things my boys and girls have enjoyed in real life.

Cool Things For Boys

Need some cool things for boys? Any of these unique gifts for boys are sure to please your little guy. Many gift ideas on this list came from my own 7 year old son.

• Archery set for kids
• Army men
• Bag of favorite snacks and gum
• Bicycle
• Binoculars
• Books from the Sugar Creek Gang series
• Cars (remote control or regular push cars)
• Castle
• Cook Book for Kids and cooking supplies
• Compass
• Costumes (community helpers, superheroes)
• Dart board
• Fidget toys
• Fish, lizard, hamster pet (real), plus supplies to care for pet
• Flashlights
• How to Tie Knots book and rope
• Kanoodle (Independent screen-free game)
• Maps
• Nerf Guns
• Outdoor survival kit
• Pogo Stick
• Puzzles
• Science Experiment Kits
• Scooter
• Slingshot for kids
• STEM building toys
• Sticky wall climber men
• Superheroes
• Squeeze stress balls
• Tools, tool box, and tool pouch
• Transformer cars
• Trampoline
• Trucks
• Walkie Talkies
• Wooden trains and train track
• Wilderness Survival Guide for Kids by Rick Bayne (book)

Girly Gifts

Need some girly gifts for the little lady in your life? These have been some of our family’s go-to gifts for girls over the years.

• Books from the Faithgirlz series
• Baking book, baking supplies, and apron
• Barbies and barbie accessories
• Beads and string for necklace, bracelet, and earring making
• Costumes (princesses and royalty)
• Cross stich set and how-to book
• Easel, canvases, paintbrushes, and assorted paints
• Journal / diary with gel pens  
• Knitting needles and colorful yarn
• Make up bag, scrunchies, hair brush
• New clothes, shoes, and hair accessories
• A pet kitten or puppy with dog bed, bowls, leash, and all the accessories
• Purse packed with Chapstick, gum, a girly wallet, money, fidget toys, and a good book (try the Classic Starts version of Little Women for 7 to 12 year old girls)
• Scrapbooking supplies (scrapbook, stickers, colorful cardstock paper, glue, tape, photos)
• Sewing machine, sewing kit, sewing tutorial book, thread, and assorted fabrics
• Sketchpad, colored pencils, oil pastels, markers, and marker caddy
• Stationary, envelopes, stamps, and pens with plumes
• Toy horses, barbies that can ride them, and horse stall
• Toy woodland animals and accessories (rabbits, squirrels, tree house, bunk bed)
• Tie dye kit and plain white t-shirts to dye
• Word searches

Sibling Gifts

Here are some sibling gift ideas that you can give all of your children as a group.

• A day pass to the aquarium with a children’s book on sea creatures, a sea life puzzle, and a set of aquatic animal toys for kids
• A day pass to your local farm with a children’s book on farm animals, a barnyard buzzle, and farm toys for kids
• A day pass to the zoo with a children’s book on zoo animals, a jungle puzzle, and a set of jungle animal toys for kids
• A backyard trampoline
• An old school CD player and audiobooks for kids on CD
• An audible subscription to listen to children’s audiobooks

Check out my post on the Best Audiobooks for Kids:

Best Children’s Audiobooks

Screen Free Gifts For Kids

Gifts for Toddlers & Preschoolers

Need some simple, screen-free gifts your kids will love for their birthday, Christmas, or other holidays? Skip the electronics this year and grab some inexpensive presents from this list. These have been some of my toddlers and preschoolers favorite gifts over the years.

Baby dolls, baby doll stroller, Dollar Tree bottles, and swaddling blanket  

Baskets to collect things (This is one of my preschooler’s most used ‘toy’ items. We have a small collection of thrift store baskets and old Easter baskets that my preschooler uses for all sorts of purposes. A basket can become a baby doll’s bed, a storehouse for board books, a place to collect flowers, a container for yummy garden finds. My kids are always coming up with new and inventive ways to utilize baskets.)

Bath toys

Bubbles

Bubble machine

Small shovels

Pop up play tunnel

Froogly suction toys (3 years old and up)

Sensory bin with kinetic sand

Shape and color sorting sets with kid’s tweezers

Stuffed animals

Playdough

Board books (Jamberry, Goodnight Moon, Corduroy, Anything by Eric Carle)

Cars and trucks

Watering can for kids

Water Wow coloring books

Stickers and construction paper

Coloring books and crayons

Chunky Wooden Puzzles

Kindergarteners

Beads and string

Books (If I Built a Car, Seven Silly Eaters, Christina Katerina and the Box, Roxaboxen)

Costumes (Grab these the day after Halloween to get a discounted price)

Legos

Lincoln Logs

Magnetic Building Tiles

Magnetic dress up characters

Plastic flower garden

Plug-in CD player

Audiobooks on CD

Portable CD player with headphones

Christmas Gift Tradition Ideas

(Fun Family Experiences and Gifts for Kids)

Christmas Snack Bag Gift

This tradition is from my husband’s family and I absolutely love it. When he was growing up, his parents didn’t buy a whole lot of junk food. Their family was on a tight budget and treats were actually considered treats. One of his favorite things to open on Christmas morning was a snack bag full of things like candy, chips, pretzels, snack cakes, soda, and juice. This is a great budget-friendly gift for kids that won’t clutter up your house because sooner or later (most likely sooner) those snacks will be gone!

Write a Christmas Wishlist

My parents always made Christmas very magical for me. They helped me write a letter to Santa weeks before December 25^th and he always wrote me back in burnt paper with calligraphy writing. There were even reindeer paw prints on the envelope.  

Also, if it snowed around Christmas time, my dad walked through the snow in homemade wooden reindeer feet to create the illusion that Rudolph himself had been in our yard.

One year, my dad even climbed a ladder and put presents on the roof of his house for my kids.

In our home, we don’t do Santa but I still appreciate the whimsical feelings of Christmas time from my childhood. My parents did a great job making it a celebratory season.

Whether or not you do Santa in your home, consider letting your kids write a Christmas wish list and starring their top 3 favorite wishes. They can either give this list to you or “mail it” to the North Pole, depending on your family traditions.

Sibling’s Gift Exchange

Our kids delight in picking out gifts for one another at Christmas time. Sometimes they give away things that are special to them. Other times, they buy brand-new gifts or we go to our favorite thrift store to score some unique finds.

Here are some ideas you can implement for a sibling gift exchange.

• Gift your child a budget and take them on a one on one date to pick out gifts for their siblings (try Walmart, Dollar Tree, thrift stores, and Amazon).
• Give your child extra chores to do to earn money to purchase gifts for their siblings.
• If you have many children, stick everyone’s name in a hat and let the kids have their own little Secret Santa game where they buy a gift for one particular sibling.
• Encourage your child to come up with creative homemade gifts for their siblings such as coupons to do their chores, fresh baked treats, or a hand-knitted scarf.

Open a present on Christmas Eve

This is by far my favorite Christmas gift tradition from my childhood. Every year my parents let me open one gift on Christmas Eve. I looked forward to this every year and have carried it into my own little family.

Extended Family Gifts for Kids

Many parents feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of gifts their kids receive at Christmas time from extended family members. To cut down on the clutter, ask your relatives for some family experience gifts instead. Send them a link to this blog post or message them your favorite ideas.

Minimal Christmas Gifts

If you want to minimize the amount of gifts for kids floating around your home this holiday season, let your children know ahead of time what type of limit you are going to set.

I’m sure you’ve heard of “something you want, something you need, something to wear, and something to read.” You could also adapt this Christmas gift tradition to “something you want, something you need, something to wear, a few things to read, and a bag of treats to eat.”

Stocking Stuffers

Stockings are a great place to stuff family experience gifts such as tickets to the zoo, fast food gift cards, and money toward summer camp.

Share your favorite gifts for kids and family experience gift ideas in the comments below! How do you do the holidays with your family at your house?

How to Reduce Screen Time for Kids