Family fun day ideas: what to put on the field and on the stage

In short

• The best family fun day ideas split into two jobs: things people wander between on the field, and moments on the stage that pull the whole crowd together.
• Field activities need a safety check before they need a theme. Inflatables, for example, should carry a PIPA tag or an ADIPS declaration and come down in strong wind.
• Stage games, It’s a Knockout races and a fun dog show give the day its peaks. Plan them as fixed points in the running order.
• Lost-child announcements, sponsor thanks, weather calls and running-order changes all go through the microphone, so whoever holds it is running your day.
• Finish on the biggest moment, not on people drifting back to their cars.

Most lists of fun day ideas give you a field full of attractions and stop there. That covers half a family fun day. The other half is the stage: the games, the announcements and the moments that turn a few hundred families doing their own thing into a crowd having the same day.

I’ve hosted family festival events with crowds past 80,000, and the attractions are rarely what decides whether the day works. The shape of the day decides it. So here are the ideas, sorted by where they happen, with the running order that ties them together.

What are the best family fun day ideas?

The best family fun day ideas mix free-roam field activities with a handful of stage moments that everyone stops for. Get the balance right and people have something to do all day, plus three or four times when the whole field is watching the same thing.

A simple way to plan it:

The field keeps people busy. The arena and stage are what they talk about in the car home.

Which fun day activities work on the field?

The fun day activities that work best on the field are ones a family can join for ten minutes and leave without needing anyone to explain the rules. Mix something for toddlers, something for older children and something adults will actually have a go at.

• Inflatables. The attraction to check hardest. HSE says play inflatables should show a PIPA tag or an ADIPS declaration, have constant supervision, and stop being used in winds above 24mph.
• Sports-day races. Sack race, three-legged race, and a parents’ race for the adults who said they’d only watch.
• The egg-and-spoon race, judged differently. At one family event I ran it on the silliness of the walk, not who finished first, which meant the least sporty person on the field could still win.
• Tug of war. Cheap, loud and very easy to commentate. Run heats through the day and save the final for the arena.
• Quieter corners. Face painting, crafts and a shaded area, for the families who need a break from the noise.
• Food. Community food stalls still have to be safe: the government’s guidance is to follow the 4Cs of hygiene and to keep chilled food out of the fridge for no more than four hours.

What fun day games can a host run from the stage?

The fun day games that work from a stage are ones the whole crowd can play at once, or watch a few people play while shouting along. Family fun day entertainment works when the crowd is in it, not just in front of it.

These are the ones I’d put on a family stage:

• Heads or Tails. Everyone stands, hands on heads or hands on bums, and a coin flip sends half the field to sit down. A few flips later there is one winner. It takes five minutes and needs nothing explained.
• Family Fortunes. I write the survey questions for that crowd, split the field into two sides and rotate the players every round, so as many people as possible get a go.
• The Generation Game. I pick the games to suit the audience, then the conveyor belt finale. There is always a cuddly toy.
• A talent or dance-off spot. Short, sign-ups taken at the stage in the morning, and every child gets a cheer.
• Prize draws. Cut the draw into two or three short slots across the day. One long draw at the end loses the crowd.

How do you run It’s a Knockout games at a fun day?

You run It’s a Knockout games by picking teams people already belong to, building silly races around water and foam, and putting a commentator on the microphone. The commentary does at least half the work.

The original ran on BBC1 from 1966, with towns competing in absurd games, often in giant foam costumes. Teams could play a Joker to double their points on one game. All of that still works on a playing field:

• Teams by street, village, club or company department, so there’s a rivalry built in.
• Bucket relays over a wobbly obstacle, inflatable runs, giant-shoe races.
• One Joker card per team, played before a game of their choice.
• A scoreboard everyone can see, updated after every game.
• Someone on the mic calling the action, because watching people get wet is twice as funny with commentary.

Keep it inclusive. If a game only suits fit adults, change it, or nobody’s grandad signs up next year.

What are good fun dog show categories?

Good fun dog show categories reward personality rather than pedigree, so any family dog has a chance. The Royal Kennel Club gives Waggiest Tail and Dog Most Like Its Owner as examples of novelty classes at its companion shows.

A fun dog show list that works:

• Waggiest tail
• Dog most like its owner
• Best rescue
• Best trick
• Golden oldie (the oldest dog in the ring)
• Best child handler
• The dog the judge would most like to take home

At a Royal Kennel Club companion show, puppies under six months can’t take part. Keep each class short, and have someone ringside narrating, because a dog show is only as much fun as the person explaining what the dogs are doing.

Community fun day ideas that bring a whole area out

Community fun day ideas work best when local people run part of the day themselves: a stall from the scout group, a dance school on the stage, a tug of war between two streets. People come to see someone they know.

The government’s Can do guide for voluntary events is reassuring on red tape, and it covers risk, insurance and using public land. Its line that it’s “good planning, not insurance” that stops things going wrong is worth pinning above the planning table.

Three checks before you book anything:

• Alcohol or entertainment on unlicensed land: you may need a Temporary Event Notice. In England and Wales it costs £21, covers fewer than 500 people at all times (staff included), and has to go in at least 10 clear working days before the event.
• Music: playing live or recorded music in public usually needs TheMusicLicence.
• Bigger events: once you’re into thousands, the Purple Guide is the industry’s own guide to health, safety and welfare at events.

What should a fun day running order look like?

A fun day running order should have fixed stage moments every hour or so, with the field busy in between and the biggest moment saved for the end. Here is a shape that works for a five-hour day:

Two reasons to plan it like this. People remember an experience mostly by its peak and ending, so the day needs a finish, not a fade. And the weather will try to change your plans. The Met Office says its four-day forecast is now as accurate as its one-day forecast was 30 years ago, so check it in the week, and have a wet-weather version of the running order agreed before the day.

Why a stage host holds a family fun day together

A stage host holds a family fun day together because everything that changes on the day goes through the microphone. Acts run late, a shower clears the field, the inflatables come down when the wind picks up, and somebody has to tell a few thousand people what happens next without the energy dropping.

At festivals with crowds past 80,000 I’ve worked across multiple stages, changing weather and last-minute running-order changes. The skill is adapting live without it showing. You can’t let a microphone do the work, and you can’t afford a dead minute, because a family crowd is always one dull moment from drifting off to the ice-cream van. So the energy stays visibly high, and people at the back of the field feel spoken to as well as the front row.

The quieter half of the job matters just as much:

• Lost children. Agree the procedure with your safety team first. Council guidance is clear that the child’s name must never go out over the PA. The announcement asks the parent to come to the control point instead.
• Sponsor and volunteer thanks, spread through the day and kept short. Never one long list at the end.
• Filling the gaps. When a changeover overruns, a crowd game covers it and nobody notices the delay.

If the fun day is for your staff and their families, my guide to the corporate fun day covers the company side of the planning. This one is about the field and the stage.

How I run a family fun day

I run a family fun day as one show that lasts all afternoon, not a timetable read out between acts. The day is won in the briefing, not on the stage, so I want the running order, the safety and lost-child procedures, the sponsors, and the wet-weather plan, before I’m anywhere near the stage.

On the day I open the field, call the arena events, and run the stage games. They’re my own games, on software I built myself, and I write them for the crowd that turns up: the survey questions, the prizes on the belt and the style of the whole thing. Every game can be played as a show at the front, with every group as a team, or with families playing along on their own phones. A field of families gets a different show from a corporate crowd, and it should.

One host. The whole day. That is the job of a family event host, and you can see the bigger stages on my festival presenter page. If you’re planning a family fun day, call me on 07596 851647 and tell me about the field, the crowd and what went wrong last year.