Bring your child to work day 2027: date, activities and a plan
Bring your child to work day 2027 is on Thursday, April 22. Here’s how to plan it at your office, with activities for every age, an agenda and a safety checklist.
Bring your child to work day, officially Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, is the morning kids find out what their parents actually do all day. People also call it take your child to work day, take your kid to work day or take your daughter to work day. The next one is Thursday, April 22, 2027.
Below is everything an office needs to run it well: an eight-week plan, 30 activities sorted by age and by department, a half-day agenda, a remote version for kids on a video call, a safety checklist you can copy and ideas for a company family day.
When is bring your child to work day?
Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day is the fourth Thursday of April, so it always falls between April 22 and April 28. It began as Take Our Daughters to Work Day and later grew to include sons.
| Year | Date |
|---|---|
| 2027 | Thursday, April 22, 2027 |
| 2028 | Thursday, April 27, 2028 |
| 2029 | Thursday, April 26, 2029 |
Some companies pick another day, like a school holiday or a quiet Friday in summer, and that works too. Put it on the calendar next to the year’s other moments with our employee engagement calendar.
How to plan take your child to work day at the office
Start about eight weeks out. Most of the work is permissions and registration; the fun part is quick once those are done.
- Eight weeks out: get a yes on scope. Agree the date, the age range, the hours (a half day is plenty) and a headcount cap with HR, security, facilities and whoever handles insurance.
- Six weeks out: name a lead and a few hosts. One organizer owns the day. Ask three to six departments to host a 20-minute station; volunteers who enjoy kids make the best hosts.
- Five weeks out: open registration. Collect each child's name and age, the parent's name, allergies, an emergency contact and photo consent. Close it a week before the day so badges and food counts are firm.
- Four weeks out: build the agenda. Split kids into age groups, pick activities from the lists below and book the rooms. Plan the day for the youngest child you accepted, then add harder options for teens.
- Two weeks out: tell everyone, not just parents. Share the agenda, the quiet zones and which meetings stay kid-free. Coworkers without kids should know what to expect and how to opt out of the noise.
- The week before: prep the kits. Print badges, the agenda and station sheets. Pack a bag for each age group with markers, tape, stickers and the supplies each activity needs.
- On the day: run it like an event. Check kids in with their badge, give the safety talk first, keep to the schedule and end on time so parents can get back to work.
- The day after: ask and thank. Send a two-question survey to parents and hosts, post the photos you have consent for, and thank every host by name.
An announcement email to copy
Send it five weeks out with the registration link. Fill in the brackets.
Subject: Bring your child to work day is Thursday, April 22, 2027 Hi everyone, On Thursday, April 22, 2027, kids aged [8 to 17] are welcome at the [city] office from [9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.]. There's an office tour, activities by age group, stations hosted by [three] departments and lunch together. To bring a child, register by [date] here: [link]. We'll ask for your child's name and age, allergies, an emergency contact and whether we may photograph them. Your child stays with you all day and wears a visitor badge. [Lab and warehouse areas] stay off limits, and [the fourth floor] is a kid-free quiet zone for anyone who needs to focus. Working remotely that day? Join the family video call at [time]: [link]. Questions? Ask [name].
30 take your child to work day activities by age and department
Pick two or three per age group and three department stations. Every one works in an ordinary office with supplies you already have.
For younger kids (about 4 to 7)
Short, hands-on and close to a parent. Twenty minutes is a long time at this age, so keep the pace moving.
- Make your own work badge. Kids draw a self-portrait, pick a job title (Chief Snack Officer, say) and laminate it on a lanyard. Add a stack of crayon business cards to hand out on the tour.
- Picture scavenger hunt. Give each child a sheet of pictures instead of words: a stapler, a plant, a whiteboard, a coffee mug. They check off each one with a parent. For older kids, use the clues in our office scavenger hunt.
- Draw my grown-up's job. Before the day, kids draw what they think their parent does at work. At the end, they draw it again. Post both side by side; the first drawing is always the better one. Need a wall for them? See our office bulletin board ideas.
- Mailroom color sort. Put colored stickers on a pile of old envelopes and have kids sort them into matching trays as fast as they can. Then they deliver one real note to a coworker's desk.
- Cardboard office build. Hand out boxes, tape and markers and let small teams build a miniature office with desks, a meeting room and a front door. Parents tour it at pickup.
- Story time about jobs. A coworker reads a picture book about jobs in a big meeting room, then each child says what job they want and why. Ten minutes of calm in a loud day.
For tweens (8 to 12)
Old enough to try a real task and explain it back. Give them a job with a finish line.
- Interview an employee. Pairs of tweens interview one employee with five questions they wrote themselves, then write a short profile to read aloud at lunch.
- Program the robot. Kids write step-by-step instructions for a grown-up “robot” to draw a house on a whiteboard. The robot follows them exactly as written, which is the whole lesson in coding.
- Design a company mascot. Give a one-line brief, 20 minutes and a pile of markers. Each kid presents their mascot to a panel of employees, who vote for a winner.
- Kid press conference. A senior leader takes 15 minutes of questions from a room of kids. Collect questions in advance as a backup; the unplanned ones are better.
- Job title charades. Act out jobs from around the building (pilot, accountant, chef, coder) while teams guess against a timer. Need more words? Draw them from our charades generator.
- Fun fact collector cards. Kids collect one fun fact each from five employees and turn them into trading cards with a drawing of the person. For fact prompts, borrow from fun fact Friday.
- Snack survey spreadsheet. Kids survey the group about favorite snacks, enter the answers in a spreadsheet and build their first chart with an analyst sitting beside them.
For teens (13 to 17)
Treat them like interns for a morning: real conversations, a real problem and honest career advice.
- Career speed chats. Six employees from different roles, five minutes each. Teens rotate and ask the same three questions: what do you do all day, how did you get here, and what do you wish you had known at 16.
- Mock interview with feedback. A hiring manager runs a 15-minute practice interview for a part-time job and gives two strengths and one thing to fix.
- First resume clinic. A recruiter helps teens turn school, sports, clubs and babysitting into a one-page resume they can use for a summer job.
- Solve a real problem. Give small teams a non-confidential brief, like redesigning the welcome email or the break room, and an hour to present a recommendation to a manager.
- Shadow a role for an hour. Each teen sits with one employee through a normal hour of work, with a clear rule about what stays in the room.
- Learn the tool the team uses. A one-hour hands-on intro to real software from the team, like a design tool, a data dashboard or a code editor, ending with something they made.
- How I got here panel. Three employees in their first few years of work share the path they took, including the detours. Teens ask questions anonymously on cards.
By department
Each department hosts a 20-minute station that shows what it actually does. Most work for ages 8 and up.
- Marketing: make an ad. Kids create a poster for a real or invented product with a headline and a picture, then the team votes on which one they would run.
- Finance: plan a party on a budget. Give a pretend budget and a price list for pizza, drinks and decorations. Teams plan a party for 20 without going over, then compare plans.
- IT: take apart a computer. An old, unplugged computer or keyboard and a set of screwdrivers. Kids find and name the parts, then try to put it back together.
- Sales: the 30-second pitch. Each kid picks an object from a box (a pen, a sticky note pad, a mug) and has 30 seconds to sell it to the sales team.
- HR: hire a superhero. Kids read three short job ads and three superhero resumes, then decide who gets which job and explain why.
- Support: answer the strangest tickets. The support team writes three silly customer emails, like a robot dog that only barks in French. Kids write polite, helpful replies.
- Design: paper prototype an app. Sketch the screens of an app on index cards, then a designer taps through them like a user while the kid swaps the cards.
- Operations: pick-and-pack race. In a safe, cleared area, teams fill three order slips from shelves of office supplies and pack each box correctly. Fastest accurate team wins.
- Legal: the case of the missing cookie. A short mock trial with a judge from the legal team, kid lawyers, three witnesses and a jury of parents.
- Data: survey the room. Kids ask everyone one question, count the answers and draw a bar chart. The data team explains how they do the same thing with millions of rows.
A sample half-day agenda
4 hours, ending with lunch, so parents get the afternoon back. Change the times; keep the order.
- 9:00 a.m.Check-in and badges (30 min). Badges, name tags and the badge-making table while everyone arrives.
- 9:30 a.m.Welcome and safety talk (15 min). A leader says hello, then the rules: stay with your grown-up, restricted doors, where the bathrooms are.
- 9:45 a.m.Office tour (30 min). Small groups see the coolest places that are safe to visit: the big screen, the mailroom, a view from the top floor.
- 10:15 a.m.Age-group activities (45 min). Younger kids, tweens and teens split up for two activities from the lists above.
- 11:00 a.m.Snack break (15 min). Labeled snacks, water and a quiet room for anyone who needs a minute.
- 11:15 a.m.Department rotation (60 min). Three 20-minute department stations, with groups moving on a timer.
- 12:15 p.m.Show and tell (15 min). Kids show one thing they made and get a certificate.
- 12:30 p.m.Lunch with parents (30 min). Pizza or boxed lunches with allergy labels. Kids head home or to the quiet room after.
- 1:00 p.m.Done. Collect the badges at the door.
Take your kid to work day for remote teams
If your team works from home, the kids are already at work. Bring them onto one shared call instead.
- Keep it to 45 to 60 minutes. Schedule one call for all the families, mid-morning, with cameras on and the parent sitting beside each child.
- Open with desk tours. Each parent gives a 60-second tour of where they work at home, and the child points out one thing on the desk they want explained.
- Show the job. Two or three volunteers share their screen for five minutes each: a design in progress, a dashboard, a map of deliveries. Nothing confidential.
- Play one game together. Job title charades or a fetch race (first to show something blue on camera) works for every age.
- Reveal the drawings. Kids hold up their “what my grown-up does” drawing to the camera. Take a screenshot only if every family agreed.
- Set the privacy rules in the invite. First names only, no recording unless every parent opts in, and a parent stays on camera with each child the whole time.
Want a finale nobody has to plan? A virtual magic show puts a live magician on the call for about an hour, with people from the audience as volunteers on camera. It runs on Zoom by default (Teams, Google Meet or Webex on request) and books about 2 weeks ahead.
Safety and policy checklist
Run through this with HR and facilities before you announce the day. Copy it into your planning doc and tick it off.
- Approve the date, hours and age range with HR, security and facilities.
- Ask your insurance or risk team whether minors on site need anything extra.
- Collect registration for every child: name, age, parent, allergies, emergency contact, photo consent.
- Each child stays with their registered parent or guardian all day; no handoffs to other adults.
- Give every child a visitor badge and collect the badges at the end.
- List restricted areas and mark them: labs, warehouse floors, server rooms, kitchens, rooftops, anything with machinery or chemicals.
- Clear whiteboards and lock screens; keep kids out of meetings with customer or personal data.
- Photograph only kids whose parents opted in, and never post a child's full name.
- Label allergens on all food and keep a nut-free option.
- Name a first aider, stock a first aid kit and walk the group through the nearest exit.
- Set up a quiet room for kids who need a break.
- Kids watch and try; they don't do real production work or operate equipment.
- Make it optional for everyone, and keep a kid-free zone for coworkers who need to focus.
Company family day ideas
A family day invites whole families to an event, usually on a weekend, instead of bringing kids into the work week. It suits companies where an office visit isn't practical.
- Family picnic with yard games. A park, a pile of blankets and three or four lawn games that kids and grandparents can both play. Rules for each are in our outdoor games for adults.
- Family field day. Mixed-age teams rotate through stations, with points for spirit as well as speed so the little ones matter.
- Open house desk tour. Families walk through the office on a weekend morning, see where their person works and meet the team.
- Craft table. A long table with one guided craft, like decorating cookies or painting cards, and a host keeping the supplies flowing.
- Family trivia. Teams must include one adult and one kid, and every round has a question only the kid could answer.
- Family talent show. Two-minute acts, a friendly emcee and a prize for every act. For act ideas, see our talent show ideas.
- Cards for a local senior center. Families make cards together for a nearby senior center. Call first to ask what they accept and how many they need.
- Kids' book swap. Everyone brings a book their kids have outgrown and leaves with a new one. Donate what's left to a school library.
- Movie afternoon. A family movie on the biggest screen in the building, with popcorn and beanbags. Pick something rated G.
- Hosted magic show. A live magician on the big screen, with volunteers from the audience. Kids and adults get fooled together.
Want a host for part of it? A magician on the big screen, a cookie kit shipped to every home (book about 3 weeks ahead) or an in-person painting host in 17 US cities, with today’s prices.
See every city we cover on our in-person team building page, or get a free quote with your date and headcount.
