How to Make a Family Fun Jar

It is all too easy to let family time fall by the wayside. With all that families have going on outside the home, we get to spend less and less quality time together as a family. After a while, you start to wonder when the last time you all spent time together as a family even was.

It’s time to make time spent with the family a priority again! You have limited time to spare, and you don’t want to waste all of your family time trying to decide what on earth to do. Here is a simple and easy way for you to have fun as a family, without the difficulty of trying to decide on what to do.

MAKE A FAMILY FUN JAR

A family fun jar is easy to make and will take all the guesswork out of deciding what you should do for family fun nights.

All you need is a jar, either from around your house or you can go out and buy one. Then, on little strips of paper, make a list of a bunch of fun ideas you’d like to do together as a family and put them in the jar! Make sure to get the entire family’s input for ideas.

You can even take this a step further by marking the papers by categories such as going out, something to watch, family games, etc. This way if the weather’s bad or you’re already having a busy day, you don’t have to worry about going somewhere if you don’t have time.

DEDICATE A SPECIFIC TIME EACH WEEK FOR FAMILY FUN.

Once you’ve created your family fun jar, you need to decide as a family when you are going to dedicate time for these activities. This should be a consistent time every week when everyone can get together, and you should try to make sure it’s on a day when you have a lot of free time.

Our family does family fun nights on Fridays since we don’t have to worry about school or work the next day, but perhaps another day works better for your family.

HERE ARE SOME FAMILY FUN IDEAS:

Now that you’ve found a time to get together as a family and created your family fun jar, you might have a little difficulty coming up with fresh ideas for your activity jar.

Over time, the ones you’ve picked will start to grow old and boring, so you want to make sure you can easily replace the ones you’ve already done. Here are some family fun time activities for your jar!

* Visit the library
* Do a puzzle together
* Go to the zoo
* Make homemade ice cream
* Play musical chairs
* Create your own tie dye shirts
* Make a time capsule
* Play charades
* Make paper airplanes
* Have a water fight
* Have an indoor picnic
* Choose a book to read out loud as a family
* Go ice skating
* Go to a drive in movie
* Make a craft together
* Go on a hike
* Go camping in your backyard or living room if you don’t have one
* Play a board game
* Make s’mores
* Start a garden
* Blow bubbles
* Watch a movie as a family
* Go on a scavenger hunt
* Make a family bucket list
* Bake something together
* Go for a walk around the neighborhood
* Have a dance party in your living room
* Watch home videos or look through photo albums

To make it easier for you to create your family fun jar, I’ve created activity strips you can print out and add to your far. I’ve created two categories – around the house and away from home.

Each category has a different border making it easier for you to choose an activity for your week.