Family Fun Night

How about family night, but you can do a different activity each week. Movie night, game night, mini-golf, bowling, go-carting, swimming, sporting event...

What about something outside...like maybe you could do walks around the block or you could make every Friday a different park night or you could make a homemade dinner and go out for ice cream. You could do a movie night, just at home with a Red Box or an On Demand or something. You could make homemade pizza or taco night or just have popcorn and snacks!

I think if you just pick any "thing" that would be fun, it'll be fun! :)

Every Wed. is Family Movie Night but since I'm sick of the tv it's about to become a game night. Our kids are 7, 5, & 2 so we try to do stuff they all enjoy. Here are a few: charades (hilarious), Lego night, dance party, marbles, puzzles, Crazy Eights, Go Fish. Sometimes we let our 7 yr old stay up after the others are in bed & play harder board games or card games.
Hope you find something that fits everyone!

lol i can't stick to a schedule to save my life so when i ever i feel like it, I just Yell " family movie night" or " family game night" and pop in a movie or pull out a board game. I wish i could make it a huge thing where dinner coordinated with the movie theme or we wore costumes while playing monopoly or something like that but I just do the best i can and that is good enough.

often it's only a half hour of games or how ever long a video we have.

as for games even my hubs gets into UNO he and dd are quite the card sharks when they play. but yes it is hard to get him to turn off the baseball game or leave his laptop.

I do better when someone else sets the schedule and we have sort of adopted a routine of watching AMerica's Funniest home Videos together on Sunday nights. The kids LOVE it and i crack up hearing their giggles.

Our Family Night is Wednesday - we watch movies, play games, whatever. We started family night because even though we eat dinner together, talk, laugh, play word games, etc. we needed a night just to "be"...between school, work, baseball and soccer (the boys want to start la crosse) we have a night just for family.

we turn off cell phones, turn the ringer off the land line, shut down computers, and don't let the outside world bother us.

Building a strong family foundation is hard when you are being pulled in all directions...so instituting one night a week that the family can focus on family? GREAT!! Eating dinner together every night is important too - catch up on the day, activities, laugh, etc.

Detest the idea of the scheduled "family fun night"!

Just. Have. Fun!

Anytime! :)

If your husband isn't big on games, think of other things you can do as a family. Go to a park. Go out for dinner and ice cream. Play catch or soccer in the backyard. Go bowling or play mini golf. Go paint pottery at Color Me Mine.

What kind of things does your husband like to do? Find a way to take his interests and incorporate your kids somehow.

Another idea is to rotate who chooses the activity for the night. As long as it is something where you can spend quality time together, it's good. Some people do movie nights, but since you can't really talk during a movie, I don't think it's good for every week. Maybe once a month.

we had family night on fridays when the kids were little. (this was back in early 90's. disney had a thing called triple feature friday on tv. (3 movies that had something in common, the theme or the place or the actor) we would try to watch at least one of the movies. but before the movie we had supper kids got to take a turn picking out the menu. then we played games. some totally kids games and some adult games that we scaled to there level (scrabble with 4 letter words instead of the biggies lol) then get ready for bed and watch a movie and sack out in front of the tv on sleeping bags. when they started falling asleep we would move them to the bedroom. we had these nights for years. as they got older the games changed and the movies sometimes disappeared all together as they had more fun just hanging out. then sports got in the way and my daughter got married and kids went off to college. and we started doing family time on sundays. now all except one are married and moved out. they still come home for family time at least once a month although we have them all over during the week but we have a scheduled family day once a month. now there are spouses, girlfriends, and grandkids. and some of the grandparents as well. our family is very family oriented. my own mom does just not get the whole making a plan for family time. but as a result of that we are very rarely at my moms house. I don't ever want my kids to feel like they are an imposition.

If you google family home evening you'll get a lot of religious ideas but there are always good ideas for themes too. One I always liked was making a cake or brownies from scratch. As we put in each ingredient we'd talk about how the brownies would not be any good if the ingredients were not right, or one was left out. We;d talk about how each person in the family is important and their contributions make a big difference.

I got that idea off one of the family home evening sites.

Another idea that is fun is family movie night. Make a big batchof popcorn, put a bunch of big pillows on the floor along with a blanket, then everyone kick back on the pillows and watch a good movie. The kids will love snuggling between mom and dad and having that special time activity.

These are important times. Your kids will be bonding with you instead of their friends they'd be doing these things with. They'll remember this time each and every time they see any reference to a movie you watched as a family for the rest of their lives. They'll also remember making a mess that can easily be cleaned up by picking up the 4 corners of the blanket then taking it outside to shake it off. The birds will clean it up!

I think you can do family fun night any night of the week, some do it on Monday and they do not participate in classes, sports, any activities at all, They only do family home evening at that time, it is their first priority.

Some do it on Sunday evening because there's not a lot going on otherwise and nothing will interfere with the time slot.

What ever time you set aside to do this do it, do NOT tell the kids something came up. That tells them that that other thing is more important than they are.

We have family days. It's every Sunday unless hubby has to work. Tomorrow it will be a local production of Sound of Music. My 9 (almost ) year old loves the film. Sometimes it could be a walk to the local dairy queen...biking at the local trails...hitting craft fairs...visiting the library....watching a movie anything really. We just get ourselves out of the house. Just us 4 and it always is a grand time.

We have our 3 kids every other weekend so the Fridays that we have them is "Family Movie Night". We ALWAYS have pizza, salad and soda and rent a kid movie. Our kids are 17 (spec needs), 13 and 10. We also have dinner at the table every night. I tried to add Wed game night but we all couldn't decide on what game to play and our 10 yo cheats so much we stopped. But I'm thinking of starting again since we are in AZ and it's hell hot out. I'm also thinking of doing a craft night that all of us could do but I'm not crafty so haven't gotten that far yet. lol Our kids to better with a schedule so we can't just "wing it". We do sometimes when things come up but mostly we "plan" our weeks out so everyone knows what to expect. Good luck.

We don't have a regular schedule, but every now and then we have a 'no electronics' day on the weekend. A whole day with no TV, Wii, phones, DS, etc. They end up being 'family fun day' because with no electronics, we play wiffle ball, go mini-golfing, play soccer, have a picnic lunch at the park, bowling, sometimes we do board games or cards too, but not always.

The first time I said it, my kids looked at me like I was crazy - what, no TV or video games? And we had such a good time that now they are usually the ones to suggest it!

I agree, any night /every night can be a fun night, with family.

Make sure everyone has a flashlight. You all can go for walks at night. Walk to an ice cream shop. Walk the dog.

Pack up a picnic dinner or pick up something, go to the neighborhood park,, then go swimming till it gets dark.

Play red light green light or Simon says. in the back yard.. Let the kids be the callers.. Teach the kids how to limbo..

Play hide and seek in the house or the yard. , but hide a particular toy instead of the kids having to hide.

We used to make the living room into a movie theater. Face chairs and sofa all facing the TV.. Close the blinds. Make the entire house dark,

I noticed on Pinterest a clever project where the kids decorated boxes to look like cars.. They were lined up like a drive in Movie! and watched the movie while sitting in their cars in the dark.

Camp in the back yard. Set up a tent, all of you sleep out there in sleeping bags.

We are really into Bananagrams We keep them in the car. We go to the neighborhood burger place and play till our meal is ready..

We played cards, dominoes, clue monopoly, Now with the ipad, we can also play "Heads up" it is a blast..

Because of our busy busy schedule during the week and an even busier schedule on the weekend, we set aside the Friday nights we're in town or noone comes to visit for our family. No friends come over, noone is knocking on the door to ride bikes or play, no cell phones, no work! That is our night to eat junk food and watch TV or a movie, or play video games with our son because he doesn't get to do any of those things all week. So its a special treat especially for him. I love it because we can be homebodies and just chill out with each other.

We play a different board games all the time during the week and weekends when we can, but sometimes we'll pull one out before turning on the TV on Friday nights. Our family nights this summer since school has been out is my husband and I taking turns reading children's classic stories to our son, like Treasure Island and The Jungle Book and Heidi at bedtime.

Have fun whatever you decide!

We do a Family Night every Friday. We usually make pizza, play a couple of hands of UNO, SkipBo, or Apples to Apples, and watch a family friendly movie.

I'm not big on games either, but I do it because we need to spend time with our kids, being silly and having fun. Hubs needs to get into it, regardless of his like or dislike of games.

There are some games I refuse to play: Monopoly, for instance. I hate Monopoly. Your husband could veto a game if it's just awful for him. But UNO usually goes fast...and we made up rules for our family to make it more interesting. With Skip Bo, we made up a rule that you can use the other player's discard piles as well as your own....which makes the game HILARIOUS to play. Games also teach kids good things like sportsmanship, turn-taking, understanding rules, and respect for others.

We try to do fun stuff on Saturday nights with our kids. When they were younger, we tried to do this - each family member gets to pick their activity and we do that, on their Saturday rotation day. It worked for a while but got kinda expensive too!! We still do whatever we just try to keep the cost down.

I am not big on games either so we used to go out to dinner every Friday night. My oldest is now in HS so she often has other plans but we still frequently go out.
We also have a hot tub which is a fabulous way to spend time together. Nothing to do in there but chit chat. Love it!
When we do want to play a game together we typically will play rock band. That I love!!!
Some times when we have dinner together we will dim the lights and light candles on the table. That seems to make dinner more special too.