A day out with your parents and children feels like the archetypal family experience – a chance for three generations to share time together, bond, and maybe take some of the weight of responsibility off your shoulders for an afternoon! It takes careful planning to find a cheap family day out that suits the needs of three generations though. Today we’re looking at some options for you.
Treasure Hunts
A treasure hunt is an age-old activity for kids, but it might be the perfect solution for a family day out that has to unite ageing grandparents and energetic kids for an afternoon.
Modern treasure hunts can be bought online and run from your phone, making the process lightweight and easy to get started with. They also come with narrative built in, rather than a mere dry list of things to find: in the world of the treasure hunt you’ll be spies and detectives, making it an absorbing imaginative exercise for your children.
You can also preview the route, so you can fit the activity to the needs of the people involved. Some treasure hunts send on an hours long pursuit across a whole city – while that might be ideal for a group of friends in their 20s and 30s, it’s not such a good fit for grandparents with lower energy levels and young children with shorter attention spans. With a bit of research you can find the option that gives the older generation a pleasant explore round a village in the Cotswolds for an hour and the younger one an epic adventure foiling the crime of the century!
The National Trust
This feels like an option tailor made for the retired, but National Trust properties cater well for adults and children together – after all, it’s the children with fond memories of a day out to a stately home who become the members and subscribers of subsequent years.
Grandparents (and tired parents for that matter) will enjoy the history, the gardens and of course the cafes, while for excited children there are nature trails, dressing up and interactive activities to bring history to life! It’s a great way to foster an interest in history from a young age, and give equal opportunities for children to burn off energy and adults to conserve theirs!
Riding a Steam Train
There are lots of heritage railways around Britain, and nothing unites the generations like the excitement of seeing a steam train pull into a station and feeling the rattle of the rails under you as it pulls through some beautiful countryside.
It’s an exciting day out for the kids, and it might inspire some interesting conversations with their grandparents about their own childhoods – real bonding across the generations!
