What are some simple, inexpensive activities families can do together?
How important is family time, anyway?
Before sharing how Family Night works at our house, let’s start with the second question. (Scroll to the end to see an answer to the first question.)
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How Important is Family Time, Anyway?
Life in modern America is hectic. It is easy to let our schedules and to-do lists (and then our desire to veg out afterwards) get in the way of time with our children and spouses.
I saw a horrifying claim that families only spend 37 MINUTES of quality time with their children each day. (The more reputable U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has similar findings.) That’s in contrast to 9 HOURS on screens a day, outside of work.
Ouch. Where are our priorities?
What are our children learning about their value to us? What are we teaching them about how to live a productive and selfless life? Or how to love and train their own children someday?
Spiritual Implications
It’s not the job of school, or church, or friends, or Grandma, or the soccer team, or dance classes, or TV—definitely not TV—to raise up our children. Some of those things may be important contributors to developing the whole child. The primary responsibility, however, God has given to parents.
(Scriptures below are quoted from the NIV. Emphasis is mine.)
What?
Fathers [this applies to mothers, too!],
Ephesians 6:4
do not exasperate your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
Teach [the things you have seen and learned] to your children and to their children after them.
Deuteronomy 4:9b
Why?
…so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life.
Deuteronomy 6:2
How?
Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.
Deuteronomy 6:5-7
Modeling is Teaching
It takes TIME to impart knowledge, skills, and character qualities. Much of this training, both spiritual and practical, (as the passage from Deuteronomy suggests) happens during the course of daily life.
Some things require direct, intentional teaching. But lots of children’s learning is caught. They observe and imitate. They pick up on mindsets and attitudes by listening and watching. Children can only listen and watch and learn from us when we are together.
Depending on children’s receptivity (and our patience level), some of the necessary teaching and training is not always pleasant. Families need fun time, together, too.
Fun time is teaching time, too. While children are young, we need to model how to have good, clean fun and interact in positive, healthy ways.
Family Connections and Influence
My husband Matt recounts an experience from his youth. His parents had grown extremely busy with a side business, on top of teaching full-time. Wanting to strengthen the family bond, they started a Friday family night. At the time, he resented it—he was a teenager and already driving, and didn’t like being forced to stay home with his family. But many years later, he wished his parents had started a family night sooner, before he had transferred his loyalty to his peers.
Because of his experience, my husband was adamant about starting a family night tradition early in our children’s lives. It is important to us that they come to love being together before other outside activities and the influence of friends became a stronger pull.
Why Family Time Should Be a Top Priority
In addition to all these reasons, we need to remember our priorities.
It is too easy to get sucked in to work, or social media, and ignore the people we love the most. (If not totally ignoring, we often push our loved ones aside for other, more urgent, priorities. Guilty there, in spite of all my good intentions.
Children are not oblivious to our misplaced priorities. Our kindergartner’s inappropriate attention-seeking behavior—along with disrespect and temper tantrums—sky-rockets when we are too busy to pay attention to her. Everyone ends up miserable!
How much better to let children know they are valuable—that they are seen, heard, and known—by devoting time specifically to being together, focused only on each other.
This was the motivation for Family Night at our house.
How Family Night Works at Our House
A couple years ago we started a Friday Family Night with our foster daughter. It has been a special way to spend time together after the busyness of the week, and to build family relationships by having fun together.
Our five-year-old looks forward to Family Night all week.
As Matt and I are no longer able to do weekly date nights, this is a good alternative for us, too. (We can still spend time together after the children are in bed.)
After supper, we spend 30-60 minutes—sometimes longer, depending on the activity and how early we start—doing a fun activity together. Most are simple activities we can do at home (movies and games if we’re not feeling creative). Occasionally we go somewhere else (the park, the mall). It’s even more rare that we spend any money.
My husband and I used to decide together on the evening’s choice of activity. But our toddler often complained that the activity I chose “wasn’t fun.” And I grew weary of doing movies by default every single Friday.
So we instituted a rotation. Each member of the family gets at least one chance to choose the family night activity each month. We start with the oldest and work down the line: first Matt, then me, and then our foster daughter, and then Matt again.
The Flexibility of Family Night
Number and Ages of Children:
Even as our family ebbs and flows with foster children entering and leaving our home, Family Night remains a constant. When other foster children enter our home, we simply add them to the rotation (if they are old enough).
The children especially love when it is their turn to choose and look forward to Friday night with great eagerness.
Time:
Most of our family night activities take place in the hour or so between dinner and bedtime. Occasionally we have time to indulge in a longer family night, starting earlier in the afternoon or going later at night (like the time we drove 45 minutes to go canoeing for an hour, then stopped for dinner on the way home). More often we end up shortening the activity because dinner was late and bedtime sneaks up on us fast.
Sometimes Fridays are not free (like when we are traveling), so we have to skip Family Night. Other times (like when family is in town for a Friday night dinner, or my husband has to work late), we simply push Family Night back to Saturday. Children can understand changes in plans if you tell them ahead of time.
Choice of Activity:
There are very few limitations on suitable activities. The main ones are time and age of children. Seasons and weather also play a role.
Sometimes we pick a relaxing activity because we’re all too exhausted to do anything else. But other times we like to expand our repertoire and try new activities that get us out of our rut. (Ahem. Exercising, creating, or interacting rather than watching a movie or TV show.)
In fact, you can make up your own activities.
For this past week’s Family Night, our five-year-old wanted a snack hunt. So we purchased some fun, individually packaged snacks, and assembled some others in Ziploc bags. She and I labeled each one with names (or initials). Then the three of us took turns hiding the snacks in the living room for each other to find. At the end, we all sat down to eat a little–you guessed it–snack. This was a lot of fun, and it filled the entire evening until bedtime.
As a side benefit, our five-year-old had the satisfaction of making up her own Family Night activity. She also experienced the confidence-boost of us accepting and encouraging her idea.
Cost:
Family nights don’t have to cost anything or be elaborate.
Most activities we can do at home (crafts, baking, cook-outs in the back yard). We save outings that we have to pay for (eating dessert at an ice cream shop, attending a school musical, canoeing,) for rare treats and special occasions.
Simply spending time doing a single activity together provides good bonding opportunities. Time doing a common activity together may even be educational. If nothing else, we are building life skills and relationship skills.
Finally, let’s answer the first question:
What Are Some Simple, Inexpensive Activities Families Can Do Together?
Some of these activities we have done many times. Others we have tried and loved and need to do again. Still others are ideas we would love to try or add into our rotation.
FREE Family Night Activities
- Movie night and popcorn
- Game night and ice cream
- Making homemade pizza together
- Baking cookies together
- Assembling a puzzle together
- Drawing, painting or coloring together
- Story-telling night
- Family yoga night
- Making cards (thank-you, birthday, get-well) together
- A project to help a neighbor
- Setting up Christmas tree, drinking hot chocolate, and dancing to Christmas music
- Picnic or cookout in backyard or a local park
- Nature scavenger hunt
- Splashing and throwing stones in a creek
- Riding bicycle together (children in bike trailer if too small to ride on their own)
- Trip to playground
- Hiking at local nature preserve
- Driving around town to look at Christmas lights
INEXPENSIVE / SPLURGE Family Night Activities
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- Episode of a Bible cartoon (like Superbook , Friends and Heroes, or Owlegories) if short on time
- Assembling handmade gifts (recently, we made cookie-mixes-in-a-jar for Christmas gifts)
- Crafting with Perler Beads together
- Dessert at Dairy Queen or another ice cream / frozen yogurt shop
- Dinner at a nice restaurant
- Browsing at Hobby Lobby or other store (could be a free activity if you only window shop)
- Going bowling
- Mini-golfing
- Attending a play or musical
- Canoeing at nearby lake (requires more time; free if you own a canoe)
- Strawberry picking at local farm in spring
- Blackberry picking in summer
- Apple picking at local orchard in fall
Conclusion
Busyness threatens to distract us from our primary job of raising our children well. Teaching directly and modeling both take time. Family Night is a fun way to spend time together, have fun, and guide our children toward good things.
Practically anything can be a Family Night activity. All it takes is some creativity and a willingness to be together—to work together, perhaps to patiently teach younger ones, and to enjoy simple things.
What Family Night activities has your family enjoyed together? Leave a comment below!
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