I love the idea of creating special traditions as a family. Creating traditions brings a rhythm to our lives. Traditions anchor our kids’ childhoods in memories and activities and togetherness. Sometimes, traditions come naturally, like decorating for a holiday or baking a special recipe together. Others might take more intentional planning if they are truly to reflect some of your family’s deeper values.
If I would list some traditions my family has now, they’re mostly centered on food. There’s definitely nothing wrong with that in fact, traditions centered on food and togetherness are incredibly important but I also want our traditions to encompass other parts of our life, too. I want them to include fun activities, special moments, and experiences that will stick with my kids as they grow.
Lately, I’ve been wanting to be more intentional about creating traditions as a family in each season of life. I’ve been thinking about what our family values are and how I can build in more meaningful time together.
If you’d like to create more traditions as a family too, here are a few key questions to think about to help get you started:
- What is most important to your family? How can your traditions reflect those values?
- What does your family like to do?
- Was there anything you did growing up that you’d like to incorporate (or modify and then incorporate) into your family traditions now?
- How can you build more intentional family time into your schedule?
Here are a few suggestions for simple fall traditions your family might like to start:
- As the leaves are starting to change, bundle up (or not—who knows what the weather will be like!) and go for a walk. Kids can collect different colored leaves if they want, grab some leaves to do leaf rubbings with later, or you can just walk together and enjoy the fall colors.
- Visit a pumpkin patch.
- Go apple picking and make a pie later that day. Bonus points if you use (or create!) a family recipe.
- Drink hot apple cider together on the day of the first frost.
- Sign up for a walk or run that benefits something meaningful to your family.
- Carve pumpkins together and watch a movie (my young kids don’t like scary things, so something from PBS, like Curious George: A Halloween Boo Fest, is more our speed)
- Volunteer at an annual community event as a family (ex: fall festivals, parades, walks/runs, charity events)
- Make a “thankful chain” in November. On each slip of paper, write one thing you’re thankful for each day in November up to Thanksgiving and add it to make a chain. If you use red and green paper, this could even double as a Christmas Countdown chain, and you could tear off each slip in December to count down to Christmas.
- Play a family game or sport outside before it gets too cold.
