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Are you looking for ideas on what to do at your next family reunion? This post will show you meaningful family reunion activities through serving others.
In the film The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy said, “There is no place like home.” Dorothy was correct. Family is home. Serving and being with family is the best feeling.
Family…
“Like branches on a tree, we all grow in different directions yet our roots remain as one.”-Suzy Kassem
Life takes each family unit in a different direction with their busy lives, but it is nice to see families planning reunions and trying to be together as one. Getting together with your extended family will help strengthen your family bond and help you connect with one another.
Planning a reunion can take a lot of work. One idea to help with your planning is to try to bring families closer together by serving others. Here are ideas for service activities your family can do for another family or other people in time of need during your family reunion.
This post is all about meaningful family reunion activities through serving others.
1. Family Service Activity List
At the beginning of the reunion have a list of service ideas to be done by different family members. Write them on a big piece of paper. Have family members write a checkmark by the activity after they have done it. One activity could have more than one check mark. Encourage your family members to see if they can finish the list before the reunion is over and make a goal to get a certain amount of checkmarks.
Here are some ideas for the list: Go visit with a family member you don’t know very well during the reunion, help a mother with her baby, play a game with a younger child, play a game with someone you don’t know as well, help clean up a game, help clean up after a meal, write a letter to someone that couldn’t make the reunion, read a book to a child, visit with someone older than you, go on a nature walk and pick up any trash you see, help make kits for people in need, etc.
2. Fight Poverty
Family members can bring canned food items to the family reunion to be collected and taken to a local food shelter. Monetary donations can also be made to your local food bank. Give your extended family a goal to reach together during the reunion and donate the money to the local food bank. During lunch hours go and help at a homeless shelter by serving food or find a local organization that could use your help.
3. Make Blankets for People in Need
Grab some fleece material and get them ready for your family members to work on as people are talking to each other during the reunion. Make a goal or 5 or 10 blankets to work on and donate them to the hospital for babies, to foster care or another organization that could use the blankets.
4. BBQ with a Family in Need
Host a BBQ for local families in need during your family reunion. Invite a few families who might be homeless, refugees, struggling or going through a difficult time. Invite them for a BBQ to let them know you care. During this time you can find out what other needs they have and adopt them into your family. Provide things for them throughout the year to help them get back on their feet.
5. Gather Kits for School-Aged Children
Collect backpacks and school supplies for kids in need. If your family reunion is in the summer this would be great to do since school will be starting soon. Each family unit can bring a certain number of the same item and then assemble the kits together and take it to a local school district or agency. School supply ideas could include scissors, rulers, paper, pencils, pens, crayons, markers, colored pencils, etc.
6. Assemble Sports Kits
Assemble sports items to send to a 3rd world country. This can be one big kit with different sporting items for one village. The kit could include a soccer ball with two nets, a football, a basketball with nets, some kickballs, jump-ropes, a baseball, bat and gloves, and a volleyball with a net.
7. Plan a Fundraiser for a Family in Need
As an extended family you could do a family reunion even if you all can’t be together. Plan and do a fundraiser for a family in need. Organize a bake sale, a yard sale or plan a carnival with all the proceeds going to the family in need.
8. Knit Scarfs
You can have family members knit scarves before the reunion and during the reunion to be collected to give to a women’s shelter.
9. Go to a Nursing Home
Take your family members to a nursing home. Ideas to do at the nursing home are to sing songs, play games like Bingo, do hair and nails or some other activity with them. A small carnival for the nursing home would also be fun.
10. Clean a Cemetery
Get permission and take your whole extended family for an hour to clean a nearby cemetery or grave of people you knew. Also, take flowers and put them on a family member’s grave to honor those you loved who have passed away.
11. Help a Family in Need
Help a family who is in need. Ideas could be to help a family that recently went through a fire. Before the reunion collect lightly used clothes, household items and gift cards to Amazon, Target, or Walmart that the family could use. Bring them to the reunion and then as a family go and give the collected items to the family.
12. Collect Hygiene Kits
Collect items for hygiene kits to give to a local women’s shelter. Each family unit can bring a certain number of items to donate. Items could be toothpaste and toothbrush, shampoo, a hairbrush, soap, washcloth and towels, deodorant, feminine products, disposable razor, and hand sanitizer.
13. Family History
Work on your family’s history together. Every family reunion the smallest family units can make a newsletter with pictures and highlight what has happened in their family since the last family reunion. Do this every family reunion to keep note of things in your extended family’s lives that have happened since the last family reunion. Make a book out of it and bring it to every family reunion so people can look at how everyone has changed over the years. Check out this post on Genealogy for Beginners in 5 Easy Steps.
14. First Aid Kits for Family/Parents in Crisis
Make kits with a pencil bag, first aid cream antibiotic packets, bandaids and bandages, wipes, gauzes, ointment, antiseptic alcohol toilettes, gloves, insect repellant and bite relief, sun screen, water bottle, q-tips, adhesive tape, cold pack and tweezers. Give to local organizations who could use these first-aid kits.
15. Clean a Camp or Park Together
Organize with the city to clean a local park or campground. Take an hour or two and have your family go and clean out a park or campground that could use some tender loving care. Take rakes, gloves and garbage bags and anything else the city suggests. You can get a lot done if everyone works hard for 1 hour.
16. Make Kits for Women and Men Serving the Country
Gather your family to write thank you letters and send packages to men and women serving your country. Let them know you appreciate all they do. Send them cookies, candy, popcorn, chips, puzzles, journals, socks, lip balm, sunscreen, soap, games, etc.
17. Welcome Kits for Refugees
Refugees sometimes leave their homes without much warning and come to the United States with only a few belongings. They are usually in need of kitchen, bathroom, sleeping, cleaning and/or baby supplies. Together with your family, plan a theme to make welcome kits by having each separate family unit bring a certain number of the same items. For a bathroom theme it could include one family bringing 10 toothpastes, another bringing 10 toothbrushes and another floss or deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, washcloths, towels, etc. After everything is collected. Place them in separate baskets and take or send it to a refugee organization near you.
These are great ideas of meaningful family reunion activities to help your family connect by serving other families during your family reunion. You could also plan to have a family reunion theme to go along with your service activities. A good service family reunion theme could be “families helping families”, “families serving together” or “families connecting with families”.
Be creative and have fun with this. Use your own ideas or take some of the ideas mentioned above and make it your own. You can also make first aid kits or 24 hour kits together as a family for each of your own family units. The important part of the family reunion is that you are together and remember…there really is, “No Place Like Home.” Let’s serve!
This post is all about meaningful family reunion activities through serving others.