Family Activity Night

I was inspired to pull together some ideas for a weekly family activity night by a recent email received from a family friend (thanks Barbara). My friend, whose kids are now in high school and college reminisced about her weekly activity night with her “babies” after one of my previous blogs triggered her fond memories of these special evenings. She relayed how Monday nights were designated a special night for a family picnic in their living room. She said that her family replicated an outdoors picnic by “literally spreading a blanket on the floor-- we would either carry out stuff (McDonald’s of course!)--or carry out from our favorite local restaurant- McLean Family--- or whatever-- but we made it a tradition every Monday night.” Despite her kids being all grown up, to this day they remember their Monday family evenings with such happiness.

It does not matter what night of the week your family designates or what activities you decide to do together on family activity night. Instead, what is important is establishing at least one special night a week to do something together. I think establishing the same night every week to ensure a routine is also important. Weeks go by too quickly and despite everyone’s good intentions to carve out family time weekly, it becomes difficult to ensure this quality time is shared if it is not part of a routine.

There are so many things you can do as part of family activity night. Your family might enjoy establishing a weekly tradition of doing the same thing each week during your designated family activity night. Perhaps there is a special game everyone enjoys playing. If playing games are something your family enjoys doing together, perhaps family activity night becomes family game night. Other ideas for the weekly activity night might be a family movie night, TV dinner night or pizza night. Pizza night could be replaced with any special food your family craves that otherwise would likely not be at the top of a Jenny Craig diet plan. Maybe your family would like to have a reading night where you take a book and read it aloud as a family. If the kids are old enough, each can take turns reading aloud a portion of the book. You could visit a special playground together, take a family walk, or attempt something else outside. Alternatively, you could use the activity night to bake or cook something new that is shared amongst yourselves or delivered to a neighbor, friend, relative or prepared for classmates.

If your family is indecisive and likes to try many different activities, you might try what my husband and I use to refer to as “picking from the bag”. Even before the kids were born, we use to have a weekly “pick from the bag” night where we would collect a list of activities that we enjoyed doing together. The list was cut up into individual pieces of paper each with a reference to an activity that we liked to do. Activities included names of special restaurants, ideas for meals to cook and a list of things to do like go to the movies, rent a movie, go out for dessert, take a walk, go to the pool, go to the driving range and other ideas. We liked the idea of having several choices, but also liked the spontaneity of not knowing exactly what was planned for the evening. We knew we were going to do something during our weekly “pick from the bag” night, but there was an element of surprise because we did not know what we’d be doing until it was time to start the activity. You can institute the same concept for your own family activity night. Simply, poll the family on activities that everyone enjoys and capture them on individual pieces of paper that you then collect in a jar or bag that is used to pick from weekly on family activity night.

There are so many things you and your family could do on your weekly family activity night and I anticipate many of you could come up with more creative activities than I have suggested. I hope you will share some of these ideas for your own family activity night. Don’t stress about what you do or spend a lot of time planning. Instead, the activity is really irrelevant. What really matters is that you and your family are spending time to together.