In this episode I’m going to talk about family fun nights. Family fun nights can be as simple as takeaway pizza in front of a movie or an episode of Masterchef, or they can be something that takes a bit more preparation. There are many different seasons of having children at home, and we found that no matter what the kids’ ages are, there are family fun nights that everyone can enjoy.
So, I’m going to mention some of the ones that we love to do. I’ll do more in future episodes, but I’m going to tell you about some of our favorites. Family fun nights are such a great way to wind down, even as mom and dad, after a long week. They’re a great way to relax, have fun, and connect with each other and with the kids, and to really enjoy each other’s company.
The first one is the fun fair. What we do here is each child, and sometimes the parents as well, come up with a stall, like you’d find at a fun fair in real life, but kind of simplified. It could be something like throwing a ball into a cup. Usually it’s indoors because it’s at night or evening, so we’ll use ping pong balls or some kind of softball.
We could do a paper airplane throwing contest, where you hang up a hula hoop, or a piece of paper with different size holes cut in it. Then you have masking tape on the floor at different distances. Then the contestants have to try and throw the paper airplane through the different size holes from different distances.
They get a different number of points on their card, which the stall holder will award them. So, each family member has a card with their name on it and the stall holder writes their winnings on there. So perhaps it would be five points for getting it through this hole from here or 10 points for this one.
Also each player will have a whole lot of coins that we give them up front, cardboard coins. To do each game, you have to pay a certain number of coins. Each person has a sign up at their stall. It says something like “Two coins for three throws.” And then the player comes up, gives you the coins and they get their throws. Then maybe they’ll get five points the first throw, zero the second, and 10 points the next throw. So then the stall holder writes 15 on their card. Then they can go and visit the other stalls or come back and do this one again if they like.
Another example of a good stall would be putting up a mirror, and then completing a maze following a line on the paper by looking in the mirror. So, in other words there is a maze on a piece of paper, you put it in front of the mirror and you only look in the mirror, and then you have to copy that without looking at your fingers.
Any kind of mini olympic games – like hopping, throwing things, throwing paper plates, throwing straws like a javelin, building a lego item in a certain amount of time, building a pile of cards in a certain amount of time that has to be a certain height, or a tower with paper cups, or creating something with tape and cardboard in a certain amount of time – will do for a stall.
Each of these stalls would be situated in a different position in the house. So, perhaps in the living room, there’ll be two, one in the kitchen, one in the dining room, and then you take turns being at your stall so the other half of the family can go and play the games, or you go and play the games while other people man their stalls. It helps, obviously, to have a big family for this, but you can also do this with friends or cousins. Half the stallholders are at their stalls, and the other half play the games, or do the activities, and get their points, and then you switch around so that the other half opens their stalls.
Then when everyone’s got a good amount of points on their card, we open the prizes shop. For this I just buy some basic prizes, maybe some candies or chocolates, some bouncy balls, and some erasers. Any little prizes that you think might be appreciated. Sometimes notebooks, pens, and erasers are more practical. Sometimes we have prizes that Dad obtains from one of his clients, and they’ll be more interesting, like a fancy water bottle with a logo on it, or a little pin. The cheap prizes would be like 20 points and the more expensive prizes worth 100 points. Basically each person can spend the points that they’ve won from their card, then the points get crossed off when they’ve claimed a prize for those points, and then they can go and play more games, and come back for more prizes. So, that one’s lots of fun.
Another family fun night that we really enjoy is a food fair. These are different to the fun fairs in that they involve food. We also do them country themed at times. For food fairs, we like to each choose a country, and then make or buy street food that fits with that country, or even get takeout from a particular restaurant if it’s something that’s hard to make.
Maybe one person would choose China and then we’d order spring rolls or a bit of sushi – although that’s kind of Japanese, isn’t it? – and little bowls of Chinese soup, some sweet and sour chicken, and some rice. We’ll use very small bowls or containers. It’s enough because each person has a few different things for their meal.
And then you have your paper coins again. You go to the stall and you buy something from that stall. I may buy a cup of Chinese tea or a spring roll. Then maybe the next person that I go to has a French stall. I’ll go to that one, and I’ll choose a croissant or a creme brulee that we’ve made. Some stalls may have more dessert type things, and other stalls main course food. Then we might go to Turkey and have a kebab. There are many fun options, and each child gets to choose their country and their food. We might go to England and have a tiny little chicken pie – the idea is to be able to visit as many stalls as possible and have food from as many places without getting too full.
Each person would also decorate their stall with maybe a flag, the colors that go with the country, or some balloons. Maybe they would dress up or wear a particular hat or a fancy dress costume from their country, anything that makes it look French or Italian. Perhaps there are pizza slices at the Italy stall.
So, it’s basically a fun way to have dinner. Sometimes a stall holder could play music that goes with the country. Set up a few speakers connected to a phone near the stall so that when you walk towards that stall, you hear the music from that country.
Next is the backwards, upside down meal. This one is really, really fun and really silly. Everything’s backwards and inside out and upside down. Be as creative as you can!
Instead of eating at the table, you could sit under the table and eat. You can make everyone wear their clothes inside out. You could start with dessert and then have a main course and then a starter. I don’t know if the kids would make it through to the starter, but sometimes we have these cards where they have different secret courses that you throw the dice for and you don’t know what you’re going to get, but the dice decide. And then not only that, but you also throw the dice to see which implement you get to eat with. Sometimes all you have is a whisk or a spatula or chopsticks to eat your meal with. So, think of any ways you can make dinner backwards or upside down, and then have fun with that.
The progressive meal. This is lots of fun to do with friends at different houses, but you can also do it at home with your family.
So, you choose three different rooms of the house. In the first room, for the first course, you perhaps put cushions around on the floor, a tablecloth on the floor or on a board, and then you sit there and have the first course. Maybe you can recline, like Jesus and the disciples around the table, or you can eat sitting on the cushions, like the Chinese. Often finger foods will work well for this course.
Then, for the main course, you move to the dining room and sit at the table. You make the table fancy and beautiful. You can have some of your children be waiters and waitresses and bring the food.
And then for dessert you go to a third room. Maybe you sit on bean bags or couches and you eat your dessert there. It’s nice to have different conversation starters or a particular topic of conversation for each room. Think of something you’ll talk about in advance, something that will get the kids going, talking about a particular issue that you introduce.
As I said, you can do that with friends; three different families can get together and then you actually drive to each house and have one course there, so that you go to three houses in total. This is lots of fun.
Next, the mini Olympics. I mentioned this a little bit before. So, for this one, imagine you need to do the Olympic games indoors; we treat it like the real Olympics. We may have teams or we may have individuals competing, and we’ll have different events. Be as creative as you like with the events.
We could make shot put with a ping pong ball that we throw. So perhaps we watch a video to see how they do it, and then we do the whole spinning and throwing thing. Perhaps a bouncy ball or something that doesn’t go far, like a ball of prestik that would thud. We’ll usually have a judge, like Dad, who decides who the winner is and gives a score to each person or each team on their scorecard.
We can do the javelin throw using straws, again seeing who can throw it the furthest. We can try the long jump inside, paper airplane throwing, discus – we use paper plates and see how far we can throw those. We write everybody’s name on their plate and then we do them individually so we can judge whose plate has gone the farthest.
There are many other events that you can think of. Sometimes you can go down the stairs on mattresses or build something using materials. There are endless ideas! And then at the end, we’ll total up all the scores. The winners stand on the podium and you can even do makeshift medals or buy chocolate medals to have first, second, and third place. Maybe everybody gets a little consolation prize, but we make a big deal of it being the Olympics.
A games night. Each family member can choose a game they want to play – a board game, a card game, or a dice game. Then you have a timer, and you play each game for 15 minutes, or half an hour, then you switch to the next one.
You can do card games like Go Fish, or Snatch where as soon as you get a group of four cards you have to grab a spoon from the middle of the table and then the last person to grab a spoon is the one who’s out. There are dice games like Yahtzee or Tenzi. These are lots of fun. Scrabble. Ordinary board games. You could do chess, checkers, or more involved games like Cluedo.
So, lastly, for family fun nights, like I mentioned at the beginning, simply a movie and pizza are always the best and most relaxing for mom. We like to alternate between pizza nights and Chinese food nights. Pizza nights we’ll buy a whole lot of pizzas and divide them or we’ll put our own homemade ones on the grill individually. Then we’ll watch an episode of our favorite show.
On the other weeks we make the Chinese meal a bit fancier. So it’s still much more relaxing, because we don’t have to make the food, but we can be creative and put a beautiful tablecloth, and layers of plates and bowls for the different courses – and, of course, chopsticks. It’s really interesting. And then we have good conversation, we relax, and do things in between courses that help us connect as a family. So I’m sure you can be very creative and think of ideas that I haven’t mentioned, things to do with your family. I’d love to hear some of the things you do, if you could send me an email. That would be Karyn@familyfoodacademy.com.
Have a look on our website at this blog post. If you’d like to be reminded of these things, that’s on familyfoodformoms.com, under ‘podcast’. I hope you have a memorable week, with some good family time, and I’ll chat to you again soon. Thanks for listening!
Download the PRINTABLE for Family Fun Nights below – the Fun Fair, the Food Fair and the Fool’s Dinner!
