[EssentialFamilyLiving]

I would like to start a thread to discuss family fun night ideas. It is one of my favorite ways to strengthen family ties and build relationships between parents and children. Here are my top 5.....
Suggestions for a Successful Family Night

Shut off the television. The purpose of family fun night is to build relationship, improve communication, develop character and values, and to simply enjoy time together in a relaxed and fun setting.

Schedule Family Fun Night on the calendar. As a family, plan the dates and times each month for the family fun night and make sure everyone gets the date(s) on their calendar. This is especially important as your children grow into teens and begin to have full schedules with sports, school activities, work, and social time with friends.

Everyone participates. The whole point of family fun night is to have fun together. This means everyone needs to participate for the event to be successful.

Everyone gets along. No arguing, fighting, put downs, or discipline allowed. Everyone should come to family night with a smile and be ready to laugh!

Make time for spontaneous fun. Family Fun Night needs to have general structure and maybe a special theme to it; however, don't have every moment scheduled with busy activities. Leave time for discussion, laughing, questions, hugs and kisses.

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[MissyChrissy]

We'll be having Family Date Night every Friday night.

I don't want to be a shrew, but if the kids don't behave, there will be discipline.

[deedee1231]

Well...we don't tend to organize family fun night, but we do manage to enjoy a lot of family fun around here! We listen to music, dance, play games, or take a walk or a bike ride, weather permitting. We also take the kiddos bowling a few times a months, we homeschool so we usually in the middle of the day while the bowling alley is empty.


We do not watch a whole lot of television, so for us renting a family movie and making popcorn and watching together is actually a big treat rather than a deterrent to building family relationships.

[fun2parent]

We like to call Friday's "Friday Fun Nights." Sometimes we plan something like going to a movie or going bowling, but even if we just stay home the rule is we do something fun as a family. It may be just simply baking cookies, renting a movie, playing board games, or building a huge fort out of the dining room tables, but we make sure we are doing an activity together! On some special Friday Fun Nights we let the kids sleep in our room and have sleepover night!

[pinkandhot]

Originally Posted by deedee1231

Well...we don't tend to organize family fun night, but we do manage to enjoy a lot of family fun around here! We listen to music, dance, play games, or take a walk or a bike ride, weather permitting. We also take the kiddos bowling a few times a months, we homeschool so we usually in the middle of the day while the bowling alley is empty.


We do not watch a whole lot of television, so for us renting a family movie and making popcorn and watching together is actually a big treat rather than a deterrent to building family relationships.

my family has movie nigt every friday . we love family movie nigt because we hardly ever watch TV . u say i now we dont even have Cable but it is ok cause we have the Wii and Computer. any way this is my first post and there will be anothr post sooon so look for me!

[jkvkdailey]

Vince and I were just talking about this before he went to school this morning! We hardly ever have a "Family Fun Night" and we need to do so more often. We all love to play games (our newest find is "Big Trouble"), and it's good to play because we need to teach our son to lose gracefully. We enjoy biking together, but unfortunately didn't find (or make) much time to do that this summer. Tonight we will be having fun together - starting with cooking a homemade pizza together, then sitting down at the table together, and finishing up with a few games of Big Trouble and Yahtzee.

I can't wait for the day to be over so we can play together!!

[erinellakal]

We just talked about having a family movie night next Friday night. I saw on John and Kate Plus 8 that they have family movie night and if they can do it with 8 little ones we can surely do it with 3!

[chio88]

Originally Posted by EssentialFamilyLiving

This is especially important as your children grow into teens and begin to have full schedules with sports, school activities, work, and social time with friends.

I totally agree. I have a son who is now 16 and it's so difficult to squeeze into his schedule. At least we still have this weekly family day together even just a day at the mall or movies. It's hard to lose bond with your children. So better start early

[MaternityPregnancy]

Just wanted to post a quick comment about the article. I started to do family home evening with my two girls last night! They are 1 and 2 1/2 years old. So, still pretty small. We were worried that they wouldn't understand what we were even doing. But! They loved it. My husband ordered the children's version of the Book of Mormon. It has pictures and stuff. We started the evening by singing a song. Both the girls loved it. My one year old was dancing and singing right along. It was very cute. We read a story and gave hugs. It only took about 10 minutes. It was a great way for us to introduce the scriptures and get the Spirit in our home!!

Much Love,
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[JeanLynn81]

As part of Alyssa's therapy, we have one hour of activites in the morning and then in the evening. Of course we do fun things all the time, but these are mandatory for us. Not that I mind, but she's not always in the mood to play and sing songs!