Ten
Ideas for Fun Times at Home
(ARA) - "There is nothing like staying
home for real comfort." -- Jane Austen
 |
Life isn't always easy to
navigate. Work, school, activities, people, and other things
can at times pull family members apart rather than bring
them together. Too often, we feel as if everyone is traveling
on a different road.
But we don't necessarily have to change our road maps
radically in order to find family time. All we need to
do is to get together and ask these questions: |
* How do we feel about our schedules? Our time together?
* How can we better balance our individual commitment and our
family time?
* Is anyone having their time use determined by others? (For
example, sometimes a child may have lot of time alone because
others are busy.) Are your children overscheduled?
* How can we make home time more appealing?
* How can we steer our family more in the same direction rather
than opposite directions?
One way to spend time together as a family is
to spend time at the table. It's an old idea but a good one.
Asked how many
times a week all the people in their household ate dinner together,
22 percent of surveyed youth said none or one, 32 percent said
two to four times, and 45 percent said five to seven times
according to a Search Institute survey.
But the picture changes as youth grow older: 60 percent of 6th
graders have meals with the whole household five to seven times
a week, but only 29 percent of 12th graders do the same. How
often do you gather the whole household at suppertime? Ask
your teenagers for ideas about making meals worth staying home
for!
Search Institute research shows that youth are
more likely to grow up healthy when they go out "with nothing
special to do"
two or fewer nights per week. Spending time at home is a critical
factor in the healthy development of children. Young people
can find themselves with too little to do or too much to do,
depending on their circumstances. Ideally, time spent at home
is a balance of unstructured play or leisure, being with
family, and being alone.
Try these 10 ideas for fun times at home:
1. Rent a funny movie on a weekday night. Make popcorn.
2. Have a family snowball, leaf, or soap suds fight.
3. Camp inside. Set up a tent or just pile sleeping bags on the
living room floor.
4. Listen to the music that each family member likes and learn
something about the performer.
5. Read the Sunday comics together.
6. Invite your child's friends over and treat
them to a special family activity or outing.
7. Have a family treasure hunt complete with map and clues.
8. Hide fun notes for others to find.
9. Have a family breakfast in the sleepiest members bed.
10. Cook dinner together, each family member preparing a dish.
Then, for a change, eat dessert first.
These ideas came from Search Institute's Ideas
for Parents newsletter #25. Visit www.search-institute.org/whatsnew
for two free downloadable
newsletters. For information on Ideas for Parents newsletter
master set or other parenting resources check out www.search-institute.org/catalog
or call (800) 888-7828.
Courtesy of ARA Content
EDITOR'S NOTE: Search Institute is a nonprofit organization
whose mission is to provide leadership, knowledge and resources
to promote healthy children, youth and communities.
