Fun activities for large families

[Gwee]

I am always looking for fun activities for my boys that will interest everyone. My 14 y.o. is obviously not interested in too many of the same things as the 2 year-old. Our favorite thing to do is bowling--that is one that everyone loves. My 2-year-old and I make a great team and my 5-year-old can even score higher than his brothers! We do a lot of bowling in the summer--at many AMF bowling centers kids get one free game of bowling every day in the summer.

Any other good ideas for large families or for small families with big age differences?

[laumau]

Going to the library is something everyone can do.

We love playing board games but that can be a bit difficult with the age difference. During the winter we have family game nights- make a fire and some hot chocolate. My older ones will play a game with the four year old, then they can play a more advanced one with me or by themselves.

I can't wait until our youngest is a bit older and we can all go to a movie.

Bike riding is something the whole family can do- if you have the right equipment, which we don't at the moment.

We do like to take walks and go to the park.

We also go to the pool alot.

[Tami C]

We go to playgrounds. Well- now that Matt and Dan are 16 and 13, the thrill of a playground isn't so much there for them anymore. But up until a year or two ago, they loved it.

We also go camping with them all. We try to get a site near the playground, and as soon as the kids are up, off they go. We take their bikes and let them ride around, and of course, we swim.

One of our favorite things when we are all together is family movie night. We buy a new movie or rent one, make popcorn, get out the Oreos, sometimes even ice cream, and all hunker down for the evening. With such an abundance of family friendly movies available, we can always find something everyone can enjoy. We even look back to the oldies- Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Mary Poppins. Even movies like Lion King and Mulan are new to the younger kids, and old enough the older ones can enjoy them all over again.

[Southern Rain]

We love to go hiking. The littlest still gets packed, but that's why we invested in an Ergo. I'm just grateful we're down to packing only one child. Everyone in the family loves to hike. Someone usually ends up a tree before we're done hiking though, seems to be a competition with the oldest two.

We also do a lot of picnics. Its way easier than taking them to a restaurant, and we usually play at a playground after we eat our picnic.

[MamaJAM]

A trip to a zoo or wild-life sanctuary can be fun for everyone. If you can plan a trip ahead - maybe the older kids can learn about the animals you'll see and they can give the 'tour' - teaching the younger ones about the things they are seeing.

Playing soccer as a family is good too. Split the family up as evenly by age as possible. Everyone can kick a ball - making soccer pretty easy for any age group.

[hedra]

What we do:

Walks
Zoo membership (REALLY pays off to get the membership, especially with the reciprocal agreements with other zoos when we travel!)
Movie night on the bed
Playground trips
Reading time (takes both parents at the moment)
Visiting other family members with kids, or having them at our place
Library sometimes (younger ones get out of control, sometimes)
Bikes around the block (little ones in wagon or stroller, Bren on trike, etc.)
Just plain playing in the yard (we have a playset that has three swings and a slide plus a playhouse, thank you to my grandfather's estate...)
Meal outside (picnic style), in our yard

We also play a lot of music for the kids, and play different music 'games' - but with mostly non-kids music (blues, bluegrass, alternative, classical, you name it). We play 'what's that instrument?' and make up the silliest dances (Gabe usually goes for the 'coolest dancer' instead of silliest, but they enjoy watching us do 'silly').

That's mostly what we do as a group at the moment. I think we could use some fresh ideas, too! LOL!

[Zoemakes5]

I've always wondered what other people did. We have a 7.5 year age range between our eldest and our youngest, 5.5 between no. 2 and 3. It's a challenge.

Movies
Swimming These are really the big two.
Water balloon tossing/games
Games--we all play Uno together and have for awhile, Zoe pairs up with one of us
This may sound odd, but they all love building sand castles, so we have a bunch of sand equipment and when we go to the beach, they do that more than swimming, even
Disneyland or WDW (though, obviously we don't do that very often!)
Sea World was GREAT for us. All of us really enjoyed it.
If the boys can play hide and seek, or chase or something, they'll be okay at a playground, otherwise, they won't be terribly interested.
Zoe can't quite ride bikes well enough yet to bike ride with them, though I imagine she will at some point soon.
They all love reading, and I will often ask the boys to read to Zoe, I tried starting reading a chapter book aloud to them, and they weren't interested. Might try that again soon.
They all like Legos to varying degrees. The boys will tollerate playing with their old Brio train with Zoe, not their favorite in the whole world, but they'll do it without too much fuss.
They all like video and computer games, but their skill level is so very different that they can't all really play together, but the boys will sometimes sit with zoe and help her play a game or two.

[Karennboys]

We like bike rides, camping, hiking, I take the kids fishing (dh hates fishing), we play cards (Slade has his own cards and sits at the table and "plays" with us. We just have to fish his out every once in a while), watch movies, go to movies. We also are a big rafting family so we do that too, although where we all go together is limited.. as the kids get older we go rougher white water.

We garden, and we train and love on our dogs (5 of those.. :) ). We have 9 acres and built a trail around it so we take walks on it a lot.