Spending time together as a family is an important goal of mine. Not just being together but true quality time. We eat together, carpool together, homework time, cleaning, the list goes on and on. That time seems to be focused on doing everything but really spending quality family time together.
6 Ideas for Spending Quality Family Time
Spend the afternoon in the park. Play catch, tag, or have a family race around the track. Bring a picnic lunch and spread out a blanket to enjoy a family meal together.
Put together a scavenger hunt for around the house, yard and/or neighborhood. Depending on the size and make-up of your family, break up into teams and have a mini competition – boys versus girls; mother/sons versus father/daughters; etc.
Create a gratitude jar together. Make giving thanks a habit within your family – set aside a specific time to focus on sharing what each family member is thankful for.
Make a family recipe book and include pictures of the meals you’ve created together. This would make a great gift for extended family members.
Camp out in your family living room for a pajama party. Make a fort of bed sheets, play board games, karaoke, the list is endless. Have each family member create a dish for snacks for the night.
Talk with one another. Have meaningful conversations with one another. Make it a point to actively listen to what each other is saying.
What are your favorite ways to spend quality time with your family?
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Welcome to our weekly Making a Happy Home post. One of my focuses this year is home life. Specifically spending more quality time together, organization, cooking and pre-planning meals, and decorating. To help with that focus, I have this weekly post for all things home-life. If you’d like to contribute as guest poster with this series, feel free to reach out to me.
Irene Soh says
I love the idea of the gratitude jar…. I am going to do it with my family. thank you for the wonderful tips.
Ashley (@JoyfullyThrifty) says
I love that your ideas are easy and don’t cost money! I love going for walks and enjoying time outside.
Familial Ramblings says
I really love these ideas–especially the gratitude jar! You don't know how tempting it is for me to start working on that right now, but unfortunately, I have a meeting. Later though! This is really fantastic though and I'm going to make sure some of these suggestions are put into practice at my home!
Kristen Creecy Ramsey says
Great inspiration! So true that we are often too busy with other things to really just relax and spend time together. We have two young girls, and they love to help me bake things in the kitchen. We also like to just hang out together outside and go for walks on a trail near us.
Michelle says
How fun!!! My youngest son & daughter love to help out in the kitchen – it inspires me to do more home cooking and family friendly meals.
Stephanie Bourne says
Great ideas! I love the recipe book idea. I have been trying to get recipes from my mom and my grandmother. My mom has been so helpful in sharing all the recipes that I remember from my childhood. My grandmother on the other hand has Alzheimers and she can’t remember the recipes nor where she put her written ones. I would love to do a book for myself as well as my 3 daughters. Thanks for sharing!
Tiffany Trotter says
I love sitting down to dinner as a family. No distractions, no cell phones, no tvs, just good quality time to catch up as a family. I love your fort idea. Parents need to learn to be more spontaneous and realize your child is only going to be young once. Live it up. The cleaning and the organizing the messes can wait. Be fun!
craftingafairytale.blogspot.com
Ashley {The Game Day Gal} says
Awesome ideas! My family and I spend a lot of time in the kitchen together. We love food/cooking! 🙂
Jennifer Schonhaar says
Great list. We try to go on at least one hike every week as a family. Since we have older children and younger this is great bonding since the older children need to help the younger children sometimes.
Angela Thiede says
Great post! I love to spend time as a family. Our son is so young that much of the time we are playing with toddler toys or reading books to him. When he gets bigger, we look forward to doing all kinds of stuff outside together…basketball, swimming, running around the yard.
misssrobin says
These are wonderful ideas. We’re getting ready for some fabulous family time: Octoboween! We watch a Halloween movie every night in October. Scary, silly, cartoon, classic, whatever. It’s awesome! We’ll do some in pajamas. Some will be sing-a-longs. I can’t wait.
Thanks for sharing your great ideas. Happy Sharefest.
Yvonne A Jones says
I cherish the times when our daughters visit with or without their husbands because while we don't ignore the husbands, we make time to just be together, talk and laugh together. And not that there are two grandbabies, the pleasure is doubled.
MELISASource says
Great ideas! I love camping with my family
Project Simple Home says
I loved spending time with my family playing card and board games. Even now, we have the tradition of playing board games nightly from Thanksgiving through Christmas Eve and the one with the most wins gets to open the first gift!
Kelly says
I heard a great idea that I plan on trying once my little one can speak. It is like the gratitude jar. Put all your favorite moments in a jar, and read them on New Year’s Eve to remember the past year! Love both ideas! Quality time is so important and my favorite moments in life!
Bobbi Parish says
What a lovely collection of ideas! You are right, spending quality time with family is so important. And the things you've suggested are all so simple and easy–nothing expensive or complicated. Thanks for sharing! ~ Bobbi
Regina Partain says
Quality family time is so very important and so very hard to come by. These are excellent suggestions. We have an empty nest, but I am going to forward this on to my daughter for her family. Thanks so much for sharing.
http://www.reginaatthelake.com
Gracielle says
Great ideas! My favorite way to spend quality family time is over dinner. We eat dinner together every night – great way to catch up on our busy days and share conversation over a meal. Stopping by from SITS!
Sarah Davidson Kostusiak says
We usually play games or Legos or read books. It's easy to let the little moments slip by…but they're the important ones!
cookcleancrafty says
Great suggestions! I also try to take the time each day to do whatever the kids want to do – jump on the trampoline, kick a ball, play a board game. I don’t always enjoy the kids’ games but I know they value theeffort and our time together.
Brandi says
Oh my gosh! I love the idea of putting together a cookbook! My daughter and I cook together for quality time, and I think that would add another layer of fun!
Sandra says
Our five children are adults now and I too wish we had done more of these things when they were little. That being said, when we all get together now we have a ball!! We are so fortunate that our children still enjoy coming home and if we don’t do anything more than eat and watch a movie we’re happy. Being together is what’s most important to us.
Cindy Howell says
I love the idea of a gratitude jar! I think I should give that a try.My boys tend to focus too much on things they want. I need to learn to be more grateful for what they have. One of our favorite things to do as a family is to play hide and seek. I know it sound silly, but my boys are only 6 and they think it’s lots of fun. 🙂
Tamara Johnson Brower says
Love the family recipe idea! It would make great extended family gifts. You could also give them at family reunions.
Janmary says
Great ideas. Our ideal way to spend family time is to have a bonfire on the beach in the evening, drink hot chocolate and toast marshmallows – happy times!
Ames Atkins-Wholesome Life Fitness says
I hope my family doesn't see this comment because I have a great idea for a present! Your recipe book sounds perfect! This is a great list!
Heather C says
Love this! Family is so important to me. We make sure to do something out of the home every week. We try to make it meaningful, educational and follow it up with journal time and dinner discussions. Thanks for posting.
danielle says
We have a family game night – kids choice.
Heather says
Looks like you have some great ideas. For us it is the rather unhealthy habit of lying in front of the TV!
uepianogirl says
We like to do storytime each night. My husband, our 3-year old daughter, our five-month old son, and myself all get in our daughter’s bed and read books. It’s nice to just take a few minutes to spend together at the very end of the day.
Amanda Kissell Smith says
Our favorite ways to spend quality time together include parks and out door activities like swimming and fishing, long drives, watching movies and eating at restaurants. We also spend quality together over meals at home. but we have to make a conscious effort to talk and share. otherwise we get sucked in by that big talking box in the living room.
Kerry Ann says
Love the living room forts–so many memories! We’ve started a family movie night each week. We all look forward to some quiet time together–our new family tradition.
aimeelynnbroussard says
Oh, I love the recipe binder idea! I really wish I had all my family recipes combined somewhere- it would make a great gift to hand down.
Renata Warner says
My 2 year old is a bookworm and requests, "Cuddle?" That means it's time for cuddles and books on the couch. If my hubby is home, we often all curl up together and read:)
Lisa Nugent Noel says
I love the gratitude jar idea.
creativekkids says
I love your idea of the gratitude jar, and it would be easy to do a family recipe book as many of our recipes are on our blog with pictures of the kids!
Monica Kusatz McConkey says
We have a lot of movie nights…and we try to combine fun family time with travel we do for business, when we can take the kids with us. I'd like to have more fun family time outside…and more events or travel with extended family. It can be a lot of work to plan, but well worth the memories and photos!
P.J. says
I like to see that people actually still believe in these things. It seems, anymore, a lot of times this doesn’t happen. And it’s nice knowing people still value family time. I think it bodes well for the future when you grow up with a good sense of family.
Britton S. Boyles-Jenkins says
I love all of these tips! We usually have family game day on weekend rainy days, and we spend a lot of time just playing outside in our yard. I love the idea of a scavenger hunt! I did something similar to this for Easter.
Pebbles and Piggytails says
I LOVE this. I am a truly a believer in quality family time and I blog about it often too. Although I am not perfect at it, I think it's something to constantly strive for. And pajama days are my favorite too.
Joyce Brewer (@MommyTalkShow) says
Weekends are really our only family time since my husband works an alternative schedule during the week and needs his rest.
We enjoyed Piedmont Park this weekend in Atlanta!
Maria S Sinclair says
Great ideas! We love spending time with the kiddies outdoors!
Tasha says
These are all great ideas! My family loves to spend a lot of time outdoors. So we do a lot of camping in the summer and lots of road trips 🙂
Carol Zwick says
I loved time spent with both my parents. I have great memories of Sunday afternoon car rides and of all things, raking leaves together. Maybe it was the beautiful fall air, but it didn't seen like work or a chore. I just remember it as a great family time.
Danielle says
Great ideas! We play lots of blocks and legos lately. My 2 and 4 year old love to create! We also go on nightly walks.
Angela says
I love your idea for a gratitude jar. We did a greatful turkey box last year for Thanksgiving, and it was so nice reading aloud what everyone was thankful for.
boltoncarley says
My family has a tradition of playing cards together and I’m never above a good fondu night either. It’s always a fun-do when you fon-due. 🙂
SheilaG @ Plum Doodles says
Those are great ideas for family time activities. I wish we had done more of those things when our kids were little. 🙂
apronstringsotherthings says
These are terrific ideas! Playing together deepens our family bond. Love the idea of scavenger hunts. We’ve used them during birthday celebrations, camping trips, family reunions. So much fun. We enjoy board games, card games, dominoes, especially on the weekends. We have a wide range of ages in our household – your list includes activities for all ages to enjoy together. Thank you!
Cecilia says
I love these ideas you’ve suggested. I loved having a family pizza party with ice cream from Baskin Robinns afterward. Those were some great times and twister was a favorite game.
Kerith Stull says
Great ideas. I feel like my family never has enough time together doing novel things that will truly create memories. My 17yo daughter has moderate cerebral palsy and 19yo daughter is recently home from college after changing her major and colleges. Putting together a “family to do” list is definitely on my to do list! Thanks for the challenge!
Marie Tucker says
Some great ideas, I especially like the gratitude jar. It’s like a list of thank you’s at your fingertips.
Dawn says
I was just thinking as I was walking to my office with my coffee that I should do something fun with my girls today…one of their favorite things to do is to bake cupcakes and decorate them to surprise daddy when he gets home 🙂
Raya says
Inside are Just Dance or Mario Kart competitons. Outside we try to visit the park and also run the track.
Shannon Gosney says
I love these ideas! We should definitely use some of these in our family. 🙂
Val B. says
We love to go to the park and spend time together. And don’t forget going ou for ice cream on a hot day. The simple things do mean alot.
rochellebarlow says
We play board games together and it’s a lot of fun with the kids. They feel like they’re grown ups playing our games. We also go to parks frequently and have tickle fights!
Michelle says
Tickle fights are the absolute best 🙂