9 Perfect Days With Your Grandkids

Memorable moments with grandkids don't have to involve national holidays, airline trips, or Ronald McDonald. Create your own special memories by focusing on the things you and your grandkids love and setting aside a day to share those activities — you can even give the day its own name. With a little creativity and a lot of enthusiasm, these made-up days may turn into cherished annual events.

Make plans for a skill-swap — the kids teach you something, and you teach them something. For example, Louella Starr, 62, of San Clemente, Calif., taught 3-year-old grandson Robert various yoga poses. "I showed him the bridge, table, and tree poses," she says. "He was a natural." For his part, Robert has taught his "Lola" a proper baseball batting stance. For your own skill-swap, consider teaching the kids a classic card game, or how to shuffle cards, while they teach you to play a new video game. Or teach them a simple piano scale, then let them teach you their favorite dance moves.

Grandkids, especially young ones, are fascinated about what life was like when their parents and grandparents were young (and especially when you were new parents and their mom or dad was little). Take kids on a tour of your personal history — places like the house where you were raised or where you raised their mom or dad, your old school, your favorite park, or the site of your first job. Maybe you can even teach them the tricks of your old trade, like stacking cans or tossing newspapers for delivery. End the day with a favorite movie from your childhood, and a favorite treat from the old days.

Bill Deisinger, 62, of West Long Branch, N.J., says no visit with 4-year-old grandson Lucas is complete without a trip on the Washington, D.C., Metro. "We say hello and good-bye as we pull in and out of all the stops. It sounds silly, but he loves it and so do I." Take your grandkids on a subway car or commuter rail to the end of a line they've never reached before, hop off, grab lunch, and explore. You can make an annual tradition of trying out new ways to get from here to there. Ride on a tram or monorail. Circle the city in a horse-drawn carriage or pedicab. Traverse the water in a ferry or paddleboat. Or consider jumping in go-carts, riding horses, or taking a helicopter or hot-air balloon tour.

Set an annual goal of participating in a local fun run or walkathon. Many road races feature shorter components geared to families and walkers. Toddlers and babies can ride in wagons or strollers while older kids try to set a personal best. You can make the day more meaningful by choosing an event tied to a charitable cause with a connection to your family and encouraging the kids to find sponsors for their run. (Charitymile.com lists events around the country and the causes they support.) Make the run a special weekend event by "carbo-loading" on a pasta dinner the night before, then celebrating with a special dinner out when everyone crosses the finish line.

If you’re a handy type with a talent for tooling around in the workshop, build a team project each year. Cobble together a simple wood picture frame, showing the kids how to do it, while they work alongside you creating art for it. As kids grow, and their workshop skills mature under your watchful eye, they can graduate to more-challenging projects like a bird feeder, a bench, an artist’s easel, a dresser, or a doll's crib. If you're a chef, or your grandkids are aspiring gourmands, create a menu and spend the day with the kids preparing a five-course feast to serve to the whole family for dinner, menus and fancy place-settings included.

Here's a simple way to get everyone clicking together: Break out the cameras. David and Linda Batron of Colorado Springs, Colo., regularly snap shots of their four granddaughters on their staircase. "It has given us a photographic history of growth and change. They love it," says David, 63. You can make picture day a special occasion by having the kids come over dressed in their best, taking the picture, then letting them change into their worst, run around the yard, and take another shot for a hilarious before-and-after. Or assign the kids a project like shooting something beginning with each letter of the alphabet. Or ask them to bring their best photos from the past year and use them to create a calendar for the year ahead.

Borrow the bracket system used to organize tennis tournaments and develop your own championship tourney to decide the ultimate pizza topping, snack food, ice-cream flavor, candy, doughnut variety, or whatever the kids love. Convene with the kids in advance to choose eight competitors. Then select pairs at random to go head-to-head, and taste-test to determine everyone's winner for each bracket until you’re left with an ultimate champion. The more ambitious the contest, the more excitement — drive around and collect slices from eight different pizza joints, or make a rule that each ice-cream flavor has to be something at least one judge has never tasted. Keep an official record book so you can revisit past champs year after year.

Circle a date on the calendar each year, commit to celebrating it with the kids, and dream up a different nonsense holiday. Anything goes, from a Backward Day — with spaghetti for breakfast, pajamas all day, and reverse hopscotch — to Color Day, when everything you wear, make, or eat has to be the same color — to Secret Identity Day with everyone going by code names and using secret superhero powers all day.

Make your outing a high-brow event by escorting them to the opera, the ballet, or a jazz club. For a berry good day, visit a local orchard and see what you can pick to prepare back home. Or stay close to home, but not too close, by visiting a town the kids have never explored to see what kinds of playgrounds and pizza it offers. You can also surrender some control to older grandkids and let them plan your itinerary. Bess Kelley, 68, a grandmother of five in Spotsylvania, Va., recalls how her teenage grandson Josh, who lives in the Outer Banks of N.C., took her out on his boat to watch the sunset. It was something she should see from the water, he told her. Josh provided pizza, dessert, and drinks onboard. "We had a wonderful evening enjoying each other's company and the beautiful sunset," she says.