Winter is coming. We don’t fear White Walkers, lol, but we do fear sitting around and binge watching our dark winter evenings away. To prevent the winter blues, especially during lockdown, our family sat down together in October and made a plan to keep spirits up and screen time down. Our solution ” Fun Family Theme Nights!”
Here are the fun family theme nights we planned!
Mindful Mondays – To start the week off in a good head space, we engage in an activity of mindfulness. Examples are meditation, yoga, gratitude journaling, hiking in the woods, and listening to calming music. We love the Deepak Chopra and Oprah meditations and there are many great free meditation videos on Youtube.
Fireside Reading Tuesdays – We light a fire, we each pick a book of choice and curl up and read for an hour or so. Afterwards, we chat about what new ideas or fun things we read about. I just finished Untamed by Glennon Doyle, which was a fantastic read – it’s on sale at Indigo right now! It’s like our own family book club except we’re all reading different books.
Documentary Wednesdays – every Wednesday, we take turns selecting a documentary to watch together. Afterwards we discus and debate the doc, and determine if any of the ideas require changes in our lives. Currently, we’re into a great documentary called Transcendence about conscious living. In previous weeks, we watched The Social Dilemma, Icarus and many episodes of The Nature of Things. Netflix has a ton of fantastic documentaries. After watching The Social Dilemma, we turned off all app notifications. This is a must watch!
Games Night Thursdays – we love board games and card games so every Thursday we can take turns selecting and playing game. Some of our favourites include Ticket to Ride, Catan, Caylus 1303, Prime Climb and many more. We also play many cards games including Cribbage, Euchre and Poker. This night is one of our family favourites!
Free-For-All Friday – we leave Friday night as a free for all. Sometimes we have a social event, we visit family, we go out for dinner, or stay home and watch a movie. We do whatever we feel like after a long week!
Social Saturday – it’s rare that we don’t have something social going on Saturday night, so we’ve slotted this night for gatherings with family and friends, whether in person or over Zoom!
Planning & Prep Sundays – we love to use Sundays to plan and prepare for the upcoming week. This includes grocery shopping, preparing food and selecting recipes for the week. Check out some of our favourite recipes here. We chop our vegetables, marinade tempeh and tofu and bake healthy stuff like breakfast muffins. We also sit down and discuss everyone’s calendar for the week to make sure we have it all covered. This is also when my husband and I plan our monthly date nights, birthday events etc. It allows us to go into the next week ready to go!
There are so many great reasons to sit down and plan fun family theme nights. You’ll spend more time together, spend less time on screens and all the fun will keep your spirits up, especially during these crazy times! To read more about making theme days during the day with your children, check out our post about creating a homeschool schedule.
Quote of the Day:
Winter, a lingering season, is a time to gather golden moments, embark upon a sentimental journey, and enjoy every idle hour.
― John Boswell, former Historian and Professor
Happy Homeskooling!
Lisa & Mara
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