Family reunion activities for kids, from toddlers to tweens

The family reunion activities that work best for kids give them a job, not just a place to wait: a shared family coloring book, a food family tree, an interview station where they ask grandparents questions, and a few games that mix cousins who have never met. Add a quiet corner for toddlers and you have a plan that fills an afternoon. Most of it costs nothing but printing.

Reunions are often where kids first meet the wider family. For many Black families in particular, the reunion is a long tradition: a 2025 essay from the UAB Institute for Human Rights traces Black family reunions back to freed people searching for lost relatives after emancipation, and describes how they became anchors during the Great Migration as relatives returned home each year. That is worth telling kids, in a sentence or two, before the day.

Before the reunion: two things to prepare

A photo board. Ask each household to send a recent photo with names. Print them, label them, and pin them by branch on a big board. Kids use it all day to work out who is who. Toddlers can play "find Grandma" on it.

Read a reunion book together. Two picture books that set the scene well, both in the Seattle Public Library catalog:

• Going Down Home With Daddy by Kelly Starling Lyons, which opens on reunion morning as Daddy packs the car to go down home to Granny's house. Good for kids who are nervous about a big gathering.
• The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant, in which a car full of relatives comes a long way to visit a family and stays for weeks. Funny, and good for the drive.

A family reunion coloring book

This is the activity we would pick if you only do one, because it works for every age and goes home afterward.

1. One page per household. Trace a photo of each household into simple line art: print the photo, lay thin paper over it against a window, and outline with a black marker. Our guide to coloring pages of your family covers free tools that do the tracing, and how to make a coloring book from photos covers putting the pages together.
2. Add shared pages. The house or park where you meet, the dish everyone waits for, the family tree, a blank page titled "Draw yourself at the reunion."
3. Print and staple one copy per household, plus extras.
4. Set out a coloring table with crayons, including a set of skin tone crayons so kids can color relatives in colors that match.

Kids hunt for their own page first, then their cousins' pages. Elders end up coloring too.

Activities that connect kids to elders

The interview station. Put a chair next to a grandparent, give kids a card of questions, and let them take turns. StoryCorps publishes a list of great questions for grandparents and family heritage, including "Where did you grow up?", "What was my mom/dad/parent like growing up?" and "What traditions have been passed down in your family?" Pick three that a seven-year-old can read aloud. Record on a phone if the elder agrees.

The food family tree. The National Archives has a free family food tree activity: kids ask relatives about a favorite food they eat with the family and why it is a favorite, draw or find pictures of each food, and arrange them on a drawn tree. At a reunion with a potluck, kids can collect answers at the table.

A printed family tree. The same National Archives page has free downloadable family trees for kids, including one for blended families and a family photo tree, plus migration and immigration journey maps. For adults who want to go deeper, the Archives also has blank genealogy charts and forms such as an ancestral chart and a family group sheet. Our guide to family trees for kids has ideas for families that do not fit a neat tree.

Cook with someone. If an elder is making the family dish, let one or two kids help with a single job: washing, stirring, carrying. Ask the cook to say one sentence about where the recipe came from.

Games for cousins who just met

Games work best when they mix branches and ages. Some reliable ones:

• Family bingo. Squares like "born in another state," "has the same birthday month as you," "knows how to fish." Kids find a relative for each square and get a signature or a sticker.
• Who is who. Hand out baby photos of adults and let kids guess who they grew up to be.
• Relay races by mixed teams. Sack race, egg and spoon, three-legged race. Assign teams so siblings are split up.
• A family scavenger hunt. "Find someone who has lived in three cities," "find the oldest person here," "find a photo older than Grandpa."
• A group photo with a job. Let one older kid be the photo director who calls out the poses.

For the littlest ones

Toddlers and preschoolers do best with short activities and a home base. Set up a shady corner with a blanket, chunky crayons, the coloring book, bubbles and a few board books. Keep the photo board low enough to point at. Expect them to drift between the corner and the action, and plan for a nap.

After the reunion

Send each household a photo of the finished food tree, the recorded interviews and any colored pages. A month later, a printed page of the reunion with your kids in it is a nice way to keep the cousins in mind; our ideas for long-distance grandparents work for faraway relatives too.

If you would rather not trace everything yourself, Colorkin can draw your family into a coloring storybook from photos, grandparents included. The pages are drafted with AI illustration tools and checked and finished by a person. We are also making a heritage coloring storybook about a family reunion. It is not on sale yet.

More books and activities for celebrating your family's roots are in our family and heritage guides.

Questions parents ask