Life changes ever so quickly, and kids grow up so fast. Keep your loved ones involved and up to date on the highlights of your life by sending out a family newsletter. You can send one out once a year, every month, or when special happenings and events occur. These family newsletter ideas help ensure that every newsletter will be fun and unique. The free templates below will have you well on your way to crafting an engaging newsletter to share with friends and family.
Ideas for a Monthly Family Newsletter
If you have close family or dear friends who live far away but still enjoy hearing all that is going on with your family regularly, then you might consider sending out monthly updates via family newsletters. These cute and catchy ideas are great themes for fun families who cannot wait to share their news with loved ones.
Family MVP
Choose one family member to highlight for the entire newsletter. Use a competition theme with images like trophies, medals, or a winner's podium. Add pictures of the family member to the podium and put their name on the trophies to personalize them.
Pick a fun title like "Smith Family Newsletter: MVP Jim Edition." Then add sections such as:
- Favorite Things: Describe what movies, music, and other activities he enjoys.
- Stats: Offer up the basics of height, current hair color, and age.
- What's New?: Let him give an exclusive interview with information on whatever might be new in his home, academic, or social life.
For families who want to include their four-legged friends, you can have one of the monthly letters be all about Fido!
Monthly Mystery
Turn your newsletter into a fun game with a mystery theme. Use a popular mystery game like Clue or a murder mystery dinner as inspiration, or go for a generally mysterious design.
- Use lots of question mark graphics and a black and red or purple color scheme to give that mysterious feeling of a magic show.
- If you want to get tricky, use disappearing ink markers to write secret messages and include the marker readers will need to make the words appear.
- You can also give a fun secretive effect by turning some sections into a scratch-off message by drawing over the words with a white crayon, then painting over it with a two-to-one paint and dish soap mixture.
Under the letter's sections, offer up information readers may not already know. This newsletter is part informative and part fun!
- Who Dunnit?: Provide a series of questions about family members followed by a collage that includes a picture of each person. Readers will have to guess which person matches each question.
- Who's Who?: Include a baby picture of each family member to see if readers can guess who's who.
- Answers: Don't forget to include an answer key in the bottom corner. Turn the text upside-down so readers won't see the answers as they read the newsletter.
Family Monthly Five
Some months are packed with special happenings and updates, while others are relatively uneventful. Regardless of what the month brings, focus on five items each month to share with your extended circle. The Monthly Five gives readers brief updates on five fun pieces of information that occurred in the last thirty days.
Include updates in the following fields of the template below:
- Top of the Class: kids' project and test scores
- All-Star Moments: big sporting games or tournament results
- Oh, the Places We've Been: family outings, such as cutting down a Christmas tree, a fun family hike, a day trip to the lake
- Growing and Changing Every Day: did a baby learn to walk? Did a new tooth pop through, or maybe your teen got braces or their driver's license? Share it in this section of the newsletter.
- Hilarious Monthly Moments: funny family happenings or a cute joke you'd like to share for a chuckle.
Special Occasion/Events Newsletter
If your family has embarked on the trip of a lifetime or has big news to share, convey it all in a special occasion or family event newsletter.
Holiday Inspired Family Newsletter
The holidays are excellent times to reach out to family and friends, send well wishes, and update everyone on your home happenings. You can choose any holiday theme that fits your beliefs and lifestyle.
- Christmas theme: Go gold and silver or green and red. Use headers like "Our Greatest Gifts" to update everyone on the kids and "Our Merriest Moments" to give short summaries on fun things your family did or places you went over the past year.
- Hanukkah: Use blue, white, and hints of silver to create a family newsletter that corresponds with the Jewish holiday. Include images of menorahs and candles, as well as the Star of David.
"Trip" It Out
If your family went on a cruise, an epic camping trip, or a cross country excursion, use this as the theme for your family newsletter. Be sure to include a few general blurbs on the kids and parents, highlighting what is new in everyone's lives, but the heavy emphasis with this letter should be on the trip! Where did you go? Who did you meet? What incredible things did you see or do? Be sure to use cute travel-inspired clipart and borders that correspond with the type of trip you enjoyed.
Life's a Beach
Everyone loves a relaxing vacation filled with sun and surf. If your family was fortunate enough to stay seaside or bum around a lake, then play on that with a Life's a Beach theme. Include beachy decor and bright colors that reflect sand and sea. Content can focus on where you went and all the sights and adventures you embarked on during your beachy getaway. Headings for sections might include:
- Having a Ball: include pictures of the family having fun at the beach. Write about a few notable activities that took place, and use beach ball decorations or borders.
- "Sea" You Soon: update the family on times during the year you will be in their neck of the woods, or use this section of the letter to announce that you are hosting an upcoming holiday or planning a family reunion.
Check Out What the ________ Family Is Cooking
What has your family been cooking up as of late? Take some fun pics posing in the kitchen with mixing bowls, the oven, lots of foods and ingredients. The letter contents don't have to be all about cooking, but the images, design, and headers for information sections can play on all things kitchen. For section headers, try out:
- Mixing It Up: include new hobbies, new skills, new moves, and other recent news
- Rolling With the Punches: snap a picture of one of the family members rolling out dough. Use this section to update friends and families on any hard times that might have befallen your family recently. Trying times are no fun, but a good attitude can make all the difference.
- Cheers to Our Loved Ones!: include a note of love and appreciation for all that your friends and family have done to support you in the last year. Have the family members pop some nonalcoholic bubbly or champagne for the over 21 crowd and use a fun toasting image to complement this section.
Our Family Grew by Four Paws
Adopting a fur baby is such an exciting event, so why not share the news in a newsletter? Include a few images of your four-legged pal as well as general details on them.
- Meet Our Furbaby: Share the pet's breed, name, and age
- Finding a Fur-ever Home: Where did you get your new pet?
- Adjusting to the New Kids on the Block: How is everyone adjusting?
- Loved by All: Include a quote from each family member on how much they love your new pet.
Use cute paw prints to create a border around your letter, as well as pet-inspired clipart.
Annual or General Family Newsletter Ideas
Many families choose to update loved ones once a year through a family newsletter. These newsletter ideas and themes will keep the family happenings and details fresh and fun from year to year.
Road Trippin' Through the Year
Design a family newsletter using a road trip theme. Include a cute family vehicle in the upper corner of the letter and add a winding road throughout the paper as a fun design element. Make each section/update a "pit stop" on the family's road trip through the year. Cute and creative titles for this theme might include:
- Road Trippin' Through the Year
- Another Year's Worth of Epic Adventure
- ______ Family Taking Roads Less Traveled
Cute and Colorful Year in Review
Sometimes the best theme for a newsletter is a simple theme. In this letter, the focus is on the content, and the theme lies in the colors used in the letter. Include all typical elements of a family update/newsletter and consider using one of the following color schemes:
- White background, heavy black lettering, pops of red
- Soft blue background with navy or royal blue writing. Include pops of turquoise, white, and sea green.
- White background, dark purple text, and hints of silver or grey
- Bright and bold colors of the rainbow. Use multicolored lettering in the letter's title, and make each section or update a different text color.
A Year Among the Stars
Fashion a family newsletter as if the members of your brood were bona fide movie stars. Use design elements like buckets of popcorn, movie tickets, stars, flashing lights, rolling out a red carpet, and film reels to adorn your letter. Include sections like:
- Oscar Worthy News: highlighting the major events that occurred throughout the year
- New Releases: What is different and new in your home? Did a brand new pet join the family? Did the gang get a new vehicle, or was a move made? Include significant changes in this section.
- Our Movie Stars: Take a picture of each family member dressed in their most dazzling apparel. Kids will think this is so much fun! Include the movie star images in the newsletter along with a summary of each family member, highlighting their current interests, likes, and goals.
The Annual Report
Create a family newsletter that might look like an annual report at a business update meeting. This report might include a summary of every family member and what is new and exciting to them. You can make fun pie charts and bar graphs to include in the summaries for kids. Use kids' current likes and dislikes, ranging in everything from food to colors to sports and leisure activities in any charts or graphs.
(Name of Family's) Gallery
Create a newsletter that emphasizes the visual arts, plays and theater, and music for a family who celebrates everything art. Take still images of art that the family has created, and save them to your computer so you can insert them in the newsletter. Also include:
- Roles in plays or musicals
- Trips to museums or shows
- The most fun family art projects that happened during the year
- Updates on choir, band, or orchestra performances
Read All About It
Extra, extra! Read all about it! Use a fun and catchy newspaper design and theme for your annual family newsletter.
- Include various happenings in the newspaper-inspired family newsletter, with each major event being a heading with a description following. Fill out the section headings in the template below, which contains the headers: Breaking News, Entertainment, Hometown Happenings (where you can include anything home-related like major moves or renovations), and Sports Highlights.
- Add in any trips, staycations, sports tournament travel or nearby excursions taken under the Travel section.
Cheers to the Start of a New School Year
Late August and early September bring about a lot of changes in families. Kids gear up to start a new school year, and sports are back on the family calendar. With all of these recent events, it is high time to inform loved ones of all these exciting changes occurring in the family's life. Consider designing a "Cheers to the Start of a New School Year" newsletter. Things to include in this fun family announcement might be:
- Updates on each kid in the family. Use chalkboard signs to write down each kid's name, age, grade, likes, and interests. Include these little updated bios in the newsletter. Be sure to save a copy for yourself, as it is so wonderful to see the changes in everyone from year to year.
- Where everyone is attending school this year, who their teachers are, and if older, what they are studying.
- Sports and activities happening this upcoming year. Who made the soccer or football team, participated in the school orchestra, or joined the art club?
Add Personality to Family Newsletters
Whether you send out monthly, annual, or special occasion-based cards, family newsletters do the job of keeping all loved ones in the loop. They help relatives near and far stay informed on your family happenings, and allow people to feel connected to your life, even when they can't be a constant physical presence. Give your family newsletter some flair and personality by incorporating a theme that resonates with you.
