Spending time alone with my immediate family is such an important part of my life. Both my husband and I juggle many life roles (including careers, mentoring, and ministry), so we make family dinners and weekly family nights with our sons a priority. The four of us take turns choosing what we will eat and do for our family date nights. We go out on special family dates at least once a month but the rest of the time, we have family nights at home on Fridays. If you are looking for ideas to increase your family bonding, I am sharing some fun family date night ideas that we enjoy with our grade school sons.
After a short family devotional, we take turns choosing the food and activity for the night. By the end of the week, I’m normally tired so I usually pick a movie or television show and order Chinese food when it’s my turn to choose. Before this year, I would check to see what was on television. If there wasn’t anything good, then I would check Movies on Demand so that we could rent a movie. One of the boys’ Christmas gifts last month was a year of Netflix, so I now see what they have available too.
The boys often pick games when it’s each of their turns to pick though. When they were younger, we would put together puzzles or crafts sometimes but they have outgrown that.
Sometimes we play classic card games. UNO and Spades are very popular. Reggie and I taught the boys how to play Spades a few summers ago…and they were the first team that ever beat us in Spades. We made the mistake of teaching them everything that we knew and they talked so much trash about winning. (It’s all in good fun though – talking trash is a part of Spades for those of us with southern roots!)
At other times, we play video games together. I prefer the active fitness games but LEGO Marvel Superheroes 2, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and NBA2K18 are their current top three choices. Fun fact: Sean (10) is the reigning king of NBA2K in our home for the last two years. He doesn’t even have “mercy” on visiting family and friends…
Cooking class is another enjoyable option. Although we normally order takeout, sometimes I will mix things up and teach the kids how to prepare a simple dinner or dessert. At one point, we had started cooking through the alphabet (A was for apple pie. B was for banana bread.) I forget the letter that we stopped at though. 🙂
These are just five ideas for family nights. It really doesn’t matter what you do though. As long as laughter, talking, and enjoying one another’s company are involved, your family date night will be a success!
