Ideas for experiences to give as gifts to kids for the holidays

Every parent we know wants to do what’s best for their children. During this time of year that often leads to trying to figure out the best Christmas gifts for kids and buying way too many items off their Christmas wish lists. It seems to happen every year in our family. I tell myself that I’m going to only get a few Christmas presents for each child and then before I know it the Christmas tree has so many gifts piled up under it that it looks like we have 10 children. Next thing you know the play room is overflowing with toys that they no longer find interesting, and it seems like money down the drain. This year is going to be different. Instead of buying them toys that they will toss aside after a few months, we came up with experiences to give as gifts, such as fun family outings and vacations.

This may sound a little selfish coming from a couple of travel bloggers. I admit that if we didn’t love to travel we may have never committed to this idea. However, this brilliant gift will not only benefit us but will benefit our children and our family as a whole. We’ve come to realize that our children have too many toys and we don’t want them to become spoiled or have a sense of entitlement. We do want them to be kind, curious, compassionate, brave, adventurous, open-minded, and intelligent both intellectually and emotionally. That’s where our idea for Christmas presents this year comes into play.

Why give experiences as gifts?

Research shows that it’s not material goods that bring people the most happiness, rather it is experiences that make memories which will last a lifetime. The excellent article from Wharton “The Science of Gifting: How to Pick a Better Present” explains “One of the reasons that buying experiences is better is because you always have that memory to return back to, whereas people adapt to things really quickly. It sort of sits on your shelf and you engage with it every day, and so it loses its shiny, bright newness. Whereas a memory, every time you refer back to it, is just as shiny and bright.”

I’d go further to say that memories are sometimes even brighter than the experience, because we tend to forget the difficult moments and hold on to the best memories when thinking back about some of our family vacations with very young children. What’s more, research shows that receiving gifts of experiences causes the recipient to feel more emotionally connected to the gift giver. Experiental gifts foster relationships.

As parents and as spouses, that’s what we’re going for – strengthening our connections to our children and each other. In the process of traveling as a family, we spend quality time together while discovering new places, trying fun new activities, tasting delicious ethnic foods, and meeting people from different cultures who can teach us and help us grow as people. Those are the experiences we want for our children, and having those experiences will mold them into the kind of human beings we want them to become.

Ideas for experiences to give as gifts

Experiential gifts could include going on vacation, going to the Nutcracker (I have that planned for a mommy daughter date this holiday season), going to a concert, a museum, out to dinner, etc. Our friends at Pages of Travel had a great idea to buy a National Park Pass as the perfect gift for travel enthusiasts, which is another excellent experiential gift that would benefit the whole family. The possibilities are endless, and the great thing is they don’t even have to cost any money. For example, on Smithsonian’s annual Museum Day Live, which is throughout the United States, we have gained free entry to fantastic museums the whole family enjoyed. Baltimore also has Free Fall Baltimore with free entry to hundreds of events/attractions throughout the city and Dollar or Less Days each year where many attractions such as the fantastic National Aquarium cost only $1 for admission. We go to that every year and save over $100 on admission. So check your hometown for events such as these and reap the benefits of free or cheap experiences throughout the year, even if not around Christmas time.

We plan to give gifts of experiences for birthday gifts as well, which started last year with taking the kids to Disney World for their birthdays. We also already starting taking a vacation together without the kids each year for our anniversary gift to each other. If you’re looking for inspiration to do the same, check out our kid-free trips to the Maldives, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Whistler.

We have so many wonderful memories from our adventures across the world with our 2 preschoolers, both of whom had passports as infants and traveled internationally multiple times before their first birthdays. Don’t get me wrong, traveling with young children is not easy peezy, but the benefits outweigh the difficulties. Fortunately we can look back and laugh now about even some of the most horrific travel moments. Like when our daughter (who was one at the time) had the worst tantrum of her life on an international flight which resorted to her rolling around on the floor of the airplane and screaming at the top of her lungs. Or when our wild 2 year old son had the opposite reaction to Benadryl on a 5 hour flight and ran screaming down the entire length of the plane before I could catch him.

As embarrassing as that was at the time, we crack up every time we think about it now. Some of our favorite travel memories with our children include our daughter kissing us over and over at Disney World saying how much she loved us, and our son having the time of his life at the “beach” and kiddie pool at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

Our daughter asks us all the time about her favorite vacation spot (the Bahamas where she saw live crabs on the beach) and asks when we are going back there.

Last year we went to New York City at Christmas as a family and that was such a magical experience that we will always cherish. We only spent a weekend there but were able to see the gorgeous decorations and visit some family-friendly NYC museums for their developing brains soaking up information like sponges. Check out how we scored a $4000 luxury suite at Park Hyatt New York for only $300 during our visit.

This year we are heading to Cameroon the day after Christmas to visit family and teach our children about their daddy’s home country and culture. We cannot wait to see the excitement in their eyes when we visit the zoo and gorilla refuge where they can see some of their favorite animals up close in a way unlike any American zoo (see our post about our last visit to the zoo in Yaounde).

We also plan to check out local holiday activities as a family, such as Zoolights and the Mormon temple in D.C. which are beautifully lit up for the holidays and are totally free to visit! Read about our experience visiting ICE and Christmas on the Potomac at Gaylord National. We are fortunate in the Baltimore area to be a few hours drive from Washington D.C., Philadelphia, and New York City, so there’s no shortage of weekend getaway excursions at our fingertips.

You don’t even have to travel outside of your city to make memories of fun experiences together. We just purchased a family membership for only $65 on Living Social to the Maryland Science Center. This gift will keep on giving all year long, and will nourish our children’s minds more than any toy we could buy.

We encourage you to explore your home city like a tourist, visiting museums and sights you may not normally consider. Take staycations on weekends and look at your hometown from a new perspective, from eyes of someone who has never been here and wants to discover its riches. We have lived in Baltimore for 10 years and just visited the B&O railroad museum for the first time this year, which was so much fun for the whole family.

We also love visiting the National Aquarium (a guaranteed hit with kids) and walking around Baltimore’s beautiful inner harbor to grab dinner and people-watch.

Think about what you can visit locally or not so locally this holiday season. Find the perfect experiences to give as gifts to your family, friends, and anyone on your shopping list. Your kids will thank you (even if not until they are grown up and look back at how wise their parents were for exposing them to new places and adventures). Your wife will thank you for not buying her a new vacuum cleaner for Christmas. Best of all, your family will bond and strengthen its emotional connection over the experience. Take lots of photos and then you can look back at them with your children as they get older and talk about the wonderful escapades you had together. That’s one of our favorite things to do. It always makes us smile and feel so blessed to be able to expose our children to such incredible opportunities.

Last words on experiences to give as gifts

We hope you will consider ditching the holiday wish lists this year and instead give the gift of experiences, whether that be traveling the world or exploring local museums, restaurants, etc with the vigor of a tourist discovering a new city. If the idea of no wrapped gifts under the tree seems terrifying to you, buy something that goes with an experience, such as a pair of Ice skates and a gift certificate for ice skating, a Football Jersey paired with season tickets, a Kid Camera or Kids Tablet for an upcoming family vacation. Check out our list of useful travel gifts for more gift ideas that would pair well with giving the gift of travel.

We think you’ll be happy with your decision to give experiences as gifts and your kids will love you more for it. 😉 At least that’s what the research says hahahaha. We’ll see how it goes this year. Remember, experiences as gifts work great for birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, graduations, or any time you need a present. If you liked this post, please share it on social media and pin it for later. Sign up for our RSS feed and email newsletter for travel tips and inspiration to explore the world.

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