Carving out time to spend with your family seems like a no-brainer, right? But with busy lives it can feel like we are all being pulled in 14 different directions and our kids are feeling it too which can make it hard to dedicated family time. You can start by setting aside a couple of hours each week to spend together. But then comes the dreaded “What do you want to do?” “I don’t know, what do YOU want to do?”
Never fear, I’ve got 10 ideas to jump-start your family night festivities!
1. Movie Night popcorn bar. If your family loves movie nights and popcorn, then this popcorn bar is the perfect way to take it up a notch. Just set out a giant bowl of popcorn and your favourite toppings and mix-ins and let everyone make their own personalized bowl of yummy goodness.
2. Star Gazing. Spread out some blankets and do some star watching. Print out some constellations maps and try and see if you can find them in the sky.
3. Game Night. This one seems like another obvious choice, but there are ways to make it more interesting, like playing for chores or other silly things (if you lose you have to do 10 jumping jacks – that sort of thing).
4. Bon fires. Don’t forget the s’mores! Nothing is more fun then telling stories, singing songs and roasting marshmallows over an open flame. Now that the summer heat is behind us the weather is perfect!
5.Taste Testing Night. Here’s a fun (and yummy) family night idea- host your own taste testing party. Every wonder which brand is the best? Make it your family mission to find out! It doesn’t matter if it’s popcorn, pizza, soda, ice cream or anything else- just get 4 different brands and use the printable score cards to record your results.
6. Go on a Scavenger hunt. Choose a route through your neighbourhood and beyond and take a walk together. Give each person a bag to take with them to collect items they find along the way. When you get back home, make individual collages or even one big collage of your treasures.
7. Colour Together. Break out the colouring books and crayons. Some of the best conversations happen this way! Plus it’s a great way to unwind and kick off some stress. Staying in the lines is totally optional.
8. Family Nerf Gun Battle– Grab some nerf guns and plan a friendly family battle. You can even divide into teams and have everyone get dressed in their “team colour.” You can get started with some fun target practice games to kick start your “Nerf War.”
9. Family Slumber Party– Here’s another super easy one to pull off. Just blow up an air mattress and stick it in the living room for a fun family sleep over. Or if you don’t have an air mattress, grab some sleeping bags or even just blankets and pillows. We popped popcorn, watched a movie, and played a couple of games until all the kids were fast asleep.
10. kite flying. One of our favourite family days in the fall and it’s also one of the easiest. Kites are simple to make too so if you don’t have one you can make one with the kids before heading outside!
My husband and I made a commitment to spend more quality time with our children this year and we want to be there to create new memories they will hang on to forever. Most of these ideas are some that we have already done before so if you can think of some new ones that your family loves I would love to hear about it in the comments below.
I love family nights of fun quality time together. These are all great ideas.
These are all great ideas. We do several. Game night and bon fires are tops at my house for family fun!
What great ideas! I’m always looking for fun family night ideas and this is a great list. I really love the taste testing night and kite flying. I’m definitely going to try those soon!
we fly kites, light up a fire in our firepit for s’mores and have popcorn with movies so i’m really loving your popcorn bar idea. what a fun new take on something we love to do.
These are great ideas for a fun family night. We usually just watch ball games.
I really love these ideas! It is so important to spend some quality time with family!
I love these ideas for family fun night! We love doing the fort and movie night thing, it’s basically a regular at our place. I’d love to get a firepit to do some campfires too!
I like these ideas, some of them are outside of the box. I would totally do them but wouldn’t have thought of them myself. These days our activities are more fall friendly.
I love the ideas about Taste Testing and scavenger hunts. What a fun way to get the whole family involved!
What great ideas to jump start a family night. I love the idea of a popcorn bar. How neat.
I love these ideas. We try to have a family fun night at least once a month. We’ve done the bonfires, stargazing and movie night, but haven’t tried some of the other ideas. Love the Nerf battle idea!
The taste testing party sounds like a blast. I bet my littles would actually have a good time with this and maybe find something they actually didn’t know they liked.
We actually did that as a youth group event. We gave them a list of places to pick up french fries and we had a taste test to see what fast food restaurant in town had the best fries. So much fun!
Family time and nights is so much fun. These are some great ideas!
We aim for at least once if not twice a week. With so much going on outside of the house it’s so important to make sure that they are getting quality time inside the house.
This is a fabulous list of ways to spend quality time with the fam. We try our best to have a movie night or game night but it doesn’t always happen every week. Thanks for the ideas of other things to do to keep the fam interested.
The How-to Guru
A family bonfire would really be fun and a good way to bond especially if it goes with games and stories. It would also be nice to have movie nights.
I try really hard to find ways to unconnect considering my line of work and the overall tech centric lives that we live. We often do board game nights, tag, etc… so these are a great addition to spice up family night.
I try really hard to find ways to unconnect considering my line of work and the overall tech centric lives that we live. We often do board game nights, tag, etc… so these are a great addition to spice up family night.
Family time is so important! I love that you give us some ideas to give us a start. Theres just the two of us now but we are working on making family a priority.
What a great list! I will be saving! We love our family nights but sometimes we need to change it up a little bit! So fun
These are really clever. I would love to spend more time around the fire this year. Some star gazing would be perfect.
So many fun ideas! I LOVE family nights so much. To this day, my mom, sister and I still like to get together and ply board games, watch movies and hang out as a family.
My kids are older now, but the popcorn bar sounds good to me! They used to love having Nerf Gun battles lol.
I love this list. We try to do as much fun stuff with the kids as possible. They are only little once and we want them to have a memorable childhood.
Bonfires – yes! I can’t have them here but I do love attending them. What a great list of family night ideas to jump start the fun!
These are such fun ideas. Sometimes we need to unplug and just enjoy one another’s company. We have a bonfire planned for the fall. Like the idea of stargazing.We have done the nerf gun battle, such fun! Our favorite way to spend Saturdays is t home watching old westerns on tv and just relaxing.
I love all your ideas! I wanted more ideas that just watching movies so this is perfect! Thank you for the list!
These are great ideas. I particularly love a good bonfire if you’re in an area where it’s allowed. There’s nothing like a huge fire to gather around with family and friends.
We typically do a boring movie night. I love the idea of adding some pizazz or something we can do together as a family that is more interactive.
Oh, these ideas are so cute! We love to camp out in our living room and combine it with family movie night, but definitely need to incorporate some of your suggestions, like the star-gazing and taste testing! 🙂
Great minds must think alike, we do a lot of these – a scavenger hunt is actually a family christmas tradition for the kids to find their presents!
I love your ideas! We are going to try a Taste Test night! I can’t wait to try it!
Bonfires and game nights are our favorite go-tos! Love this list for family time! Super important as the kids get older too!
I love family nights! I think my favorite idea is the taste testing! What a fun idea.
I love your ideas! We are going to try a Taste Test night! My kiddos would love having the chance to try out a variety of different kinds of something and then placing their vote!
Yes! We try to do family game night every week. Sometimes we’ll watch a movie or do activities outside the home. We love our local summer movie series and the family series of orchestra concerts also. It;s so important to build relationships with our children that don’t involve discipline, instruction, and subordination.
A family night sounds perfect right about now. With all the hustle and bustle of school taking time to bond sounds great.