Today, I’m talking about creating of a different kind. I want to talk about creating TIME.
Many months ago I was reading Family Fun magazine while I was in the waiting room for one of my prenatal check ups.
It listed some ideas for helping to motivate kids to do chores or something…I can’t remember completely. Well…from one of those ideas, table time at our house was born.
The deal was that if everyone tidied up, got showered/bathed, and ready for bed by a certain time that we would take 15-30 minutes to play a game together as a family. The longer the kids took to do their chores, the less time we would have for “table time. ” But…on the flip side, getting them done quicker would give us more time. Our kids love to play games with us, so it worked like a charm.
It was win-win. The kids got ready for bed happily (usually) and we took time to make family memories each night.
Toward the end of my pregnancy a lot of things fell by the wayside, and this was one of them. So, after Natalie was born I really wanted to get it going again.
Some dear friends let us borrow this game…Blokus. Well, they should have given us a disclaimer that it is incredibly fun and addicting! It’s fun for everyone, us and the kids. Sometimes my husband and I play another game just us two after the kids are in bed.
And little three year old Reid can play. He needs some help, but that’s part of the fun. We all try to get Reid to put a piece down that will block someone else! 🙂
We made sure the Easter Bunny would bring us a Blokus of our own. And now it’s back!
Table time is back and so is family time.
With so many reasons, excuses, and extra-curricular activities threatening to take time away from family, table time helps us combat that.
We take time to teach our kids how to be good sports. We create funny memories and get to hear our kids saying that weirdest/craziest/most personal/most hilarious things.
Most importantly, we show our kids that we love them.
After all…a wise man once said, “In family relationships love is really spelled t-i-m-e, time.”
I hope you get to enjoy some time with your family this week. 🙂
This is a really good idea. My three year old loves games too. Maybe this could be our "wind down" time each night!
I just told my husband about this idea and we both love it! We play card and board games together now, so this is a great idea to save away for our future kiddos! Thanks for sharing!
I just told my husband about this idea and we both love it! We play card and board games together now, so this is a great idea to save away for our future kiddos! Thanks for sharing!
We LOVE Blokus at our house! The hubs and I are very competitive. 😉
that's a fine idea.
we do quiet time before bed. Everyone sits and reads and calms down before actually going up to bed. But as you can imagine there's not a lot of interaction. Maybe we could have the best of both worlds by doing games on weekend nights. we love games here too! hmm… definitely going to have to consider it…
We love this game too! Now the next game you need to check out is "Animal upon Animal"…look it up on amazon! Totally fun, your kids will love it, and you'll find yourself and your husband wanting to play once the kids are in bed.
Definitely need to think about this maybe for the summer. My work schedule doesn't allow much time before we begin our bedtime routine. But on my days off…perfect.
we love that game!
i've never heard of this game, but it sounds like one I should get! we need to do better at creating family time and this sounds like a great way to do it.
This is a really great idea! I love that it's something fun for everyone and it's not about technology, tv, or video games. I'm sure this is something they'll remember when they get older!
Thanks for sharing! My girls love to play board games and we seem to never "have" the time to play… except on random monday nights when there is nothing else planned. We also love Blokus! We just got it at Christmas and I love that it really is fun for adults and kids! Love your blog. You are too cute.
I love this idea! I love having Family Game Night.
We do something very similar at our house with our young boys as well. It is so important to spend quality time together, and Blokus is a favorite at our house too! We just had a new baby this month and it is so hard to balance everything. Thanks for the reminder to take time together!
Check out Blokus Trigon!
We looooove that game around here too. After we’ve played a few rounds my nine year old always makes a maze with them to go thru 🙂
We’ve been trying to do this as well. With two teenagers and a toddler, we are stretched pretty thin. Our favorite time is game time! Blokus looks fun! Our favorite right now is Apples to Apples.