Family Night- St. Patrick’s Day

I wanted to get back in the habit of having a  theme family night once a week or at least twice a month.    The goal has always been just to spend quality time together as a family, but every once in awhile I like to spice it up by making it a “theme night.”

Since St. Patrick’s Day is coming up, I had to take advantage of all the great ideas.  So, here is what we did for an evening of Irish fun.
Game: Pot of Gold Hunt.  For this activity we purchased the chocolate coins and “hid” them around the house.  I use the term hid loosely because in reality they were just lying around.  We did hide a small “pot” with lots of coins.

Art-n-Craft: M&M Rainbow (found my inspiration here). First we sorted out the colors then Lil’man glued them on to the corresponding color in the rainbow.

Music & Dance:  Irish Jig!  After striking it rich, we had to celebrate by doing an Irish Jig.  So, we popped in some Celtic music and got jiggy with it.
Food: Mint Chip Ice Cream. I am not a big fan of some of the Irish main dishes, so we settled for something green for dessert!
Read Irish Tales:

For Fun: To end the evening we enjoyed a green bubble bath. (Not the best picture, but you get the idea.

Family Night- Halloween at the Zoo

Every year our local zoo has a Halloween Party.  We have never gone before, but since grandparents were in town and since Lil'man is a little bit older we decided to try it out for the first time.  It was crowded!  There weren't a lot of spots to trick or treat, but I really didn't want all the candy because you know Lil'man wouldn't be eating it!  But despite those two things, we had a lot of fun, saw some animals and had the cutest little puppy ever!

On top of that, we got a show we weren't expecting.

Family Night- Farm

Well, we had our second family "theme" night. Lil'man has been into farm animals lately. So, we decided to focus on things that happen on a farm for our family night. While, daddy was at work, Lil'man and I prepped for the evenings festivities. We even got dressed in our farm attire. We had several activities planned that tied into farm animals, but they had to wait until after dinner. Mr. P  picked up some good 'ole country cooking for dinner...KFC.

Lil'man really loved the farm activities. His favorite was gathering eggs. We were also impressed with how he kept the cowboy hat on the whole evening.

Here is what I used to create our Family Farm Night:

• Rainbow Shape Animals- I colored them in Photoshop Elements before I printed them on card stock because I plan to use them for Tot School.  However, you children can help you get ready for the festivities by coloring in the animals.
• Bucking Bronco-  As you can tell from our pictures, our bronco didn't look like the horse on the farm, but since my husband is a fan of Denver Broncos, it worked out great for us. An alternative that you could try is a horse on a stick.  If you don't own one, then make your own.  On the last page of this PDF is a horse head that you can print and attach to a yard stick or long wrapping paper tube.
• Cow Branding- You will need pictures of cattle, finger paint or paint of any color, and a cookie cutter of the letter you want to brand onto your cattle.
• Egg Gathering- I just used white card stock and cut out ovals for the eggs, but if you have plastic eggs then those would work great.  You will also need a basket of some sort to put your eggs into.
• Dinner- You can make this as simple or as complicated as you would like...just make/buy your favorite country dish.
• Library Books:

Family Night- ELMO

I have been wanting to plan a theme Family Night ever since I saw this blog. I am so excited because I finally did it. Since lil'man loves Elmo, this little monster inspired the evening's festivities.

We wanted to surprise lil'man with all the fun Elmo stuff we had planned, so we had him play in his room while we were setting up. Once we were ready I cued up Elmo's Song. The first thing he noticed was Pin the Nose on Elmo, which ended up being his favorite activity of the evening. He was pinning the nose all over the house. He, also, kept asking for us to replay the song, so he could sing and dance. For dinner we ate Elmo's favorite meal (pizza) and watched an Elmo video. We ended the evening with coloring Elmo pictures.

Our family had a lot of fun. What do you do on Family Nights?

Family Night with a Twist

Today I was reading Beneath the Surface, another mommy blog, and was totally inspired. She created a "theme" family night. It was too cute! I don't know about all you other mommies out there, but our family tries to set aside a day for special family activities. However, we don't intentionally plan it. The last one that we intentionally planned was in May. We spent over an hour coloring a 4' x 5' sheet of white paper. My Lil'Man loves to color.

Hopefully, now that I am not so focused on grading and planning school lessons, I will have the opportunity to plan more intentional family nights or days and just maybe I can pull something off like this.