While you would all probably love to escape to a beach or ski slope for spring break, the harsh reality is jobs don’t really do spring break, and many of you will be staying home, adulting. The kids are out of school though, and they’ll be bored by Tuesday, so you’re going to need some special activities to make their break feel special. Don’t sweat it though. With the right spring break staycation ideas, your whole family can have a stellar week full of fun and adventure, without leaving the driveway!
A Year’s Worth of Fun!
At Adventures From Scratch, we live for family-fun days! That’s why we have put our heads together to create Adventures From Scratch: Family Edition. Our scratch-off adventure book includes more than 55 fun ideas ranging from at-home crafts to weekend adventures. You simply consult the handy key. Pick a category. Scratch off your activity, and then get out there and explore. We include conversation prompts to help with family bonding and a scrapbook feature to document your adventures. With this baby on your bookshelf, you’ll never hear those dreaded “I’m bored” words again!
The Best Spring Break Staycation Ideas
Families come in all shapes and sizes, with a wide variety of interests, so we have tried to feature activities for every crew. We’ve got exciting, at-home activities for kiddos, fun things for teens, and road trips for collegiates too. Let’s plan your perfect spring break at home!
Spring Break Staycation Ideas for Kids
1. Living Room Obstacle Course
There is nothing more exciting for little people than an obstacle course. It doesn’t have to be anything extravagant, but if you get creative, you’ll be surprised how long you can keep them entertained. Set up hula hoops down the hallway for jumping. Use the dining chairs for an over-under climb-through. A big ball of yarn and some clear tape make a great “laser” course, and at least one room will need to have a lava floor! Alternate your physical challenges with some mental or motor skill events such as ping pong ball/cup toss, ring toss, a puzzle race, or a riddle challenge. It’s a bit of work, but once it is set up, leave it up for the week, and they’ll keep themselves entertained.
2. Children’s Museum
During spring break and school holidays, the best children’s museums offer scores of guided activities. Some require parents to stay. Some don’t. You’ll have to check your local options. Either way, a trip to the museum for a special event is a fun way to spend a spring break afternoon.
3. Backyard Camping
Just because you can’t get away for the week doesn’t mean you can’t go camping! Honestly, children love setting up a tent in their own backyard or sleeping in the RV in the driveway, just as much as an expensive trip to a formal site. Set up a fire pit. Roast hot dogs and s’mores for dinner. Tell stories around the fire, or play board games. Do some stargazing and learn about constellations with a stargazing app.
4. Nursing Home Visit
Even on their annoying days, kids tend to bring joy. It’s in their nature. Gather up a group of your children’s friends and a few board games or decks of cards and arrange to visit the local nursing home. The elderly are rejuvenated by visits with children, and generally, the two ends of the human spectrum get along swimmingly! Your kiddos will gather some mature wisdom, and they’ll spread their infectious joy to our elders. It’s a win-win!
5. Toy Cleanout
Spring cleaning is a must in most households. Utilize your extra time during spring break to have the kids go through their toys. Throw out the broken ones. Gather the gently used ones for a good cleaning, and then donate them. You might need to make it into a game. Set out a laundry basket or large box and challenge the kids to a race to fill their donation box.
6. Ice Cream Shack
Why not utilize spring break to teach some entrepreneurial concepts? Put the kids on art project duty to create a painted wooden sign or posterboard marketing their ice cream stand. They can set up at the local park or in the front yard with a few ice chests and several flavors of ice cream or popsicles. Let them decide on prices, design their marketing, and put out their flowers in town. Perhaps they’ll earn enough to pay for a spring break trip next year!
7. Indoor Scavenger Hunt
For a fun way to spend an afternoon, check out the at-home family scavenger hunts from Let’s Roam. We have hunts for kids of all ages, focusing on writing, geography, math, and animals. You have a different hunt for every day of your spring break. You don’t need any supplies or pre-planning. Just download our app. Sign up for the hunt of your preference and get started immediately or perform at your leisure!
8. Planetarium
Take a day trip to the nearest planetarium to learn all about the solar system! Most planetariums have special events and hands-on activities for kids of all ages, and they change routinely, so each time you visit you get a slightly different experience.
9. Disney Sleepover
If you have a little prince or princess at home, then let them have a few friends over for a themed sleepover. Instead of pajamas, they can show up in their best superhero costume or fancy princess dress. Roll out the sleeping bags and have a movie marathon of your favorite Disney movies, eat junk food, or bust out the art supplies and let your little royalty create their own crowns and scepters!
10. Gardening Day
Spring isn’t really official until you have a freshly planted flower bed, and spring break is the perfect time to make it happen. Planting flowers or an herb garden gets the kids outside, teaches them about the concept of life and rebirth, and teaches the value of hard work. Plus, the instant gratification of a beautiful bed is something they can be proud of having a hand in! If you need to extend the activity to buy more time, take them to the plant outlet and let them pick their favorites!
Spring Break Staycation Ideas for Teens
Little kids are fairly easy to entertain. If you are excited about it, you can generally get them to enthusiastically go along. Teens and tweens are a whole different ballgame. Here are a few spring break opportunities, that offer a bit of controlled autonomy, you could suggest and see if they bite.
11. City Art Walk
Book an urban art walk through the Let’s Roam Scavenger Hunt App. We have street art walks in cities all over the United States, and they are generally contained in a 2-3 miles radius, taking 1.5-2 hours to complete. Your teens will hop from piece to piece, learning interesting trivia and completing fun photo and video challenges along the way. They’ll compete against previous groups to top the overall city leaderboard and gain some major bragging rights!
12. Backyard Bonfire
One of the best spring break activities for teens is to give them full reign of the backyard with their crew. Allow them to invite a few friends. Build a huge bonfire if your area allows such. Set them up with a good speaker system, a few yard games, tons of hot dogs and s’mores, and a few ice chests of cold drinks. They’ll have a blast.
13. Pajama Movie Marathon
Spring break is for lounging and resting! Allow your teens to sleep in one day, then spend the whole day watching their favorite movies and chowing down on junk food. Paint your fingernails. Do foot spas, color your hair, or work on your family scrapbook while you watch The Lord of the Rings trilogy for the millionth time. Doing something simple like a movie marathon with your teen is sometimes the best way to go, especially if you just want to have good conversation and some quality bonding time.
14. Community Service Project
Put their idle hands to good use over spring break by finding a place to volunteer. Spring cleanup doesn’t just happen at home. Most communities will have some sort of litter round-up, flower or tree planting initiative, or a similar project for the year. Check your community website for ideas, pop into the local churches and see what they have going on, or visit the community center. If nothing organized is going on, then put your activist to work to organize their own event! You might be surprised by the creative ideas they come up with!
Check out “Community Service Ideas for Every Type of Volunteer” for some unique ideas!
15. Rooftop Stargazing
This one is a personal fave. When I was a teenager, a small group of us had a Friday night routine. We would snag a burger from Sonic (only restaurant in town) and head for our local playground or one of our rooftops (whichever parent was cool enough to let us get up this week). We’d gorge ourselves on junk food, solve all of life’s problems, and find (mostly perverted) shapes in the stars. All these years later, I still relish those times spent with my pals. Good, innocent fun!
16. Themed Dance Party
If you’ve got a “life of the party” kind of teen, help them throw an extravagant soiree that fits their big personality. Pick a fun decade like the 1920s or the 1950s and go all out. Send out invitations with instructions on the dress code. Set up a speaker system and era-appropriate playlist. Have a TV on the side playing YouTube dance instruction videos from the era. If your kids are young tweens, invite the parents too and make it a family affair.
17. Local Museum Tour
After a stern talking-to about behavior, museums are a pretty safe place to set your tweens free to explore. They are contained, it will pass a few hours, and perhaps they’ll even learn something.
18. Water Park Day
This one works as a family activity for kids of all ages. Toddlers love the kiddie pool, and big kids (or parents) can totally get with the lazy river or the giganto wave pool. It’s a fun day for the whole clan.
19. Tour a Small Town
Sometimes the best destinations are just a short drive away. If you have a teen who is a good driver, encourage them to get out and explore a few nearby towns. Small towns are packed with interesting history, vintage stores, mom-and-pop eateries, and funky little museums to explore. Spice it up by giving them a weird list of items to find and photograph!
Oh, looky, looky, we have even gathered a list of “The Best Small Towns to Visit in Every State.”
20. Memories Book
High school is a time that seems to drag on forever when you are in it, but in reality, it passes by so fast, and before you know it, all those people and experiences are long-lost memories. Encourage your teen to use their week-long break to start a high school scrapbook. Print off photos from their phones, and gather the newspaper clippings of any achievement they have had. Collect the movie ticket stubs from their first date, the prom napkin, etc, and build a beautiful scrapbook. Have them write notes on all the little things they feel and remember before those memories go up in smoke.
Spring Break Staycation Ideas for Collegiates
While the luckiest college students will be hanging in Miami Beach, a week in the sand and seas isn’t in the cards for everyone. If you’re stuck working this spring break, need to visit family, or are just totally broke, check out one of these awesome spring break staycation ideas.
21. City Scavenger Hunt
Been too busy in class to explore your college town properly? Sure you have! Well, spring break is a perfect time to hit the city on foot and see what it has to offer besides your crummy dorm room. Let’s Roam City scavenger hunts are a budget-friendly way for friends to hang out in the city for a day. Just download our scavenger hunt app, up to four players can play on one device, or better yet, snag a ticket for each player so you can all interact. You’ll explore the best spots in town, challenge your random knowledge with some trivia, and complete fun photo and video challenges along the way. You’ll also be competing against other teams for the top spot on the city leaderboard!
22. National Park Day
If the beach bash with the crew isn’t possible, maybe you can steal a weekend getaway in your nearest national or state park! It might sound like a second-rate break at first, but trust us, the U.S. has some absolutely incredible national parks, and they are cheap to visit. Pile in the car for a road trip. Get a National Park Pass for $80, which will cover entrance for the whole car, and hit the trails. Go whitewater rafting in Glacier National Park. Hit the iconic trails of Zion National Park, or get lost in the wilderness of Acadia. Every state, except for Delaware, has a national park, so you have plenty to choose from!
23. Mentoring
College is a great time to give back. You are young and fun. Tweens and teens look up to you, and it looks really good on a job or internship application. Whether you do something formal through Big Brothers Big Sisters, or just find a younger youth to hang with, take some time to pass on your wisdom and be a listening ear for a younger person during your spring break!
24. Let’s Roam Bar Crawl
For the over-21 crowd, there is no better way to spend your spring break nights than to hop on one of our app-guided bar crawls! We’ll take you on an adventure to four of the best bars and clubs in your city, with challenging trivia and fun photo and video prompts along the way. You’ll explore your favorite watering holes in a whole new way that we know you are going to love. Check out our full list of bar crawls and book yours now!
25. Ghost Hunt
Perhaps you and your crew prefer a little spook on your nights out? You are in luck! On Let’s Roam’s innovative ghost hunts, we combine the basics of our scavenger hunts, but with a sinister twist! Obviously, the best time to take on a ghost tour is at night. So gather the crew, and set out to the darkest, spookiest corners of your city. You’ll learn all about the torrid history and meet a few paranormal neighbors along the way! From San Francisco to Eureka Springs, to Savannah, we have hunts all over the country. Find one near you!
26. Job Scouting
It might not sound too fun, but you know that old adage, “Find a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Well, there is some truth in that, and now is your time. Take your spring break week to do some job shadowing in a few areas that you are interested in. Often, one or two days in a job are enough to let you know for sure if it’s something you want to pursue or turn and run from!
27. River Day
Spending a day on the river, doing some kayaking with your best buds, and a few cold ones… it really doesn’t get better than that! Kayaks or canoes are usually a fairly budget-friendly activity for a group of college students, and you get a lot of bang for your buck. Choose to camp out for the night, or just make a day trip. Either way, you’ll get a head start on the summer tan, get a good workout, and have a blast!
28. Ale Trail
Ale trails are becoming more and more popular, especially in those havens of craft beer. Often they include a bike ride or scooter rental between brewery tours. You get to taste tons of great beers, learn about the brewing process, and get a little tipsy with your crew. It’s a great way to spend at least a day of your spring break vacation. Some trails take a couple of hours to complete, and some a couple of days. You will usually get an ale passport at your first stop and collect stamps at each brewery along the way until your passport is complete, and you earn a free t-shirt or something.
29. Spring Concert
From Electric Daisy in Las Vegas to Coachella in Indio, California to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and a million smaller spring concerts and festivals all around the country, you and your crew can easily find a concert venue within a day’s drive! Spring festivals like these celebrate the vibrant life that is so evident in springtime. They are a time of refreshing the soul with the sounds of incredible music, awesome arts and crafts, and tasty food! We can’t think of a better way to spend your spring break staycation!
30. Adult Playday
Let out your inner child by hosting an adult-ish playday. Build a DIY slip-n-slide. Set up cornhole and horseshoe pits. Put out some plastic kiddie pools for soaking. Hire a bounce house, or rent a fat-suit sumo wrestling ring. Get creative! As long as you have pizza and a few ice-chests, your friends will gladly play along!
It’s playtime!
That’s it, folks! There are your 30 best spring break staycation ideas! We know that vacation is always better, but if you just can’t travel this year, we hope we have given you some inspiration to make your time at home a little more fruitful and fun. If you found your plan on this list, let us know which activity you will be rocking in the comments!
For more great suggestions, check out this “Ultimate List of Spring Break Ideas for Kids.”
Spring lasts longer than a week! Fill your season with a few activities from “31 Exciting Ways to Celebrate Spring With Kids.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Kids get bored fast, but with a little creativity, you can keep kiddos entertained with backyard camping, an action-packed obstacle course, or an educational indoor scavenger hunt!
Spice up your spring break at home with a scratch-off adventure from Adventures From Scratch: Family Edition, set up an ice cream shack, or plan a big backyard bonfire!
If you can’t make it to Miami with the crowd this year, then head for a weekend in your nearest national park, take a city scavenger hunt, or organize an adult playday with your crew.
Too much time at home got you down? Take some time to volunteer in your community, do an urban art hunt, or go for a hike in your nearest national or state park.
For a fun staycation, plan a few indoor scavenger hunts, a day at the water park, and a day of gardening, and then spend your evenings having a backyard camping session!
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