Games

Hello once again web folk the last time I posted here for the games blog I was writing about making some money by making video game commentary videos for YouTube. For this post I decided to change direction a bit an go back to an old topic that I have written about before but happens to be very near and dear to my heart. Therefore I feel like I have more to contribute to the concept of a family game night and how important that has become in our family.

Let me start with a little background on our family for those of you that may have never read any of my blogs before. I’m a dad of two kids a boy who is 9 and a girl that is 7 and along with my wife we try to monitor as much as we can what our kids see on TV. To that end the only television that our kids see is on the weekend and it has been that way forever so they don’t know any different. We also make it a point of having dinner together at the table every night after work and after that we have family game night Monday thru Friday. Yes we have made family game night a 5 nights a week tradition that has made a huge difference in how we get along as a family.

Needless to say that having time set aside every night where we can play some games together has challenged us to come up some creative ways to keep the kids interested. Thankfully it has become such a routine for them now that they look forward to having that time at the end of their day with mom and dad. So much so that it has become a good leverage tool to have on the children when they need a little reminder on the rules of the house. Taking away a night of family gaming has tremendous value in the eye’s of our kids now and has become a great parenting tool for discipline which was something we were not planning on but are now very grateful that we have it.

So what are some of the things we do to keep the family game night exciting for the children since we do it so often? Well I am glad you asked my good web folk friends. Let me give you aquick rundown of some of the games that we play during the week. When the weather is nice enough we try and take advantage by doing something outside like a family bike ride or a game of horse on the basketball court. We will also occasionally play a quick game of wiffle ball or badminton all of which work out nicely for a family of four.

Now obviously we don’t always have the time or the nice weather to play a game outside so we include the more traditional games to play as well. All the old school board games like Life, Scrabble, Monopoly and a few others that we enjoy but board games and card games are not the only indoor games that we have at our disposal. We also have a PS3 in the house that we have loaded up with a lot of family friendly games like Family Feud, The Price is Right and Wheel of Fortune to name a few of the gaming options we have on there as well. As you can see just by the few ideas that I mentioned that there are more than enough alternatives to just sitting your kids in front of the TV. All of which pay off much bigger dividends to the bonding of your family than watching a mindless show. So what are your thoughts on a more frequent family game night? Do you think that five nights a week is too much or is it something you might want to consider doing with your family? Have your say in the comments section down below.

Kudos to you peruser

Dave