Soft, quilted fabric bag and book, Let’s Make a Memory

by Gloria Gaither & Shirley Dobson

To enter, simply comment on one of the ideas in the list of ways to enrich you family.

Winner will be randomly selected by http://www.random.com and will be announced June 4th.

Photo taken by Laurie Harris

Bonding with Family Fun if one of the SMORE themes. Bonding begins when the physical connection, the umbilical cord, is cut. Emotional attachments are more than just feelings. One of the ways to bond with your child is by having fun together. Fun creates fond memories.

My friend and author, Michele Howe, included the following ideas in her book, Going It Alone and she gave me permission to share them with you.

Funstarts: 201 Ideas for Enriching Family Fun 

Fun Together Inside

• Have a chess or checkers marathon.
• Gather all the loose family photos and place them in photo albums. Decorate the albums with silly stickers and funny captions under individual photos.
• Empty all the sock drawers into one big pile in the living room.  Have everyone dig in and pair up the estranged socks.
• Place charade ideas inside balloons, then inflate the balloons.  Each person selects a balloon, pops it, and then acts of the charade for the rest of the family.
• Read bedtime stories by flashlight under the covers.
• Sponsor a family film fest.  Rent or borrow several movies.  Set up a kitchen concession stand complete with beverages, popcorn, and candy.
• Give each other facials using commercial mud masks.  Do manicures and pedicures using glittery nail polish.
• Make an indoor tent city.  Use tables, chairs, furniture, and sheets for covering.
• Sponsor a silly sports night.  Each person makes up the silliest game possible and teaches the rest of the family to play.
• Do face painting on the entire family (including mom).  Take pictures and send them to distant friends and family.
• String buttons on thread and make necklaces
• Design a family motto T-shirt using puff paints, glitter, buttons, and old broken jewelry.
• Take turns reading the funny papers aloud at dinner time.
• Have a jigsaw puzzle contest.  Distribute to teams or individuals puzzles having the same number of pieces, then race to see who completes their puzzle first.
• Buy a goldfish.  Give it a sophisticated name.  Keep it in a glass jar on your kitchen counter
• Bring sleeping bags into the living room.  Turn off the lights and take turns telling stories until bedtime.
• Have a topsy-turvy day.  Do everything in backward order.  Brush teeth before eating.  Turn clothes inside out.  Eat dinner for breakfast.
• Play Bingo.  Purchase prizes at a local dollar store.
• Just for fun, set back all the clocks in your house two hours.  Give the kids the extra time to play before bedtime.
• Rearrange bedroom furniture.  Add posters or simply change decorations around to create a new look.
• Teach your children how to short-sheet a bed.
• Have a musical smorgasbord.  For the entire day, put on a different type of music every hour.
• Bring out everyone’s shoes.  Polish and shine them together.
• Dress up your pet dog or cat in fancy hats, ties, coats, dresses, and gloves.  Position them on a piece of furniture and take pictures.  Have these photos blown up into posters.
• Find new and interesting shoelaces.  Take out old, worn laces and replace them with new, colorful ones to dress up used tennis shoes.
• On a rainy, summer day, cut out assorted snowflakes from construction paper and use colorful yarn to hang them onto windows.
• Pick a color day.  Wear one particular color all day.  Teach books with the same color binding.  Play games with the chosen color on the box. Eat foods made up of this color too.
• Play “I found it first!”  Instruct everyone to start searching for a long lost item when you say, “Go!” The first person to find the missing item gets a treat.
• Institute “I’m your chum day” when Mom pretends to be her child’s friend all afternoon and does everything an age mate would do with the child.
• Borrow a joke book from your library.  Take turns selecting and reading jokes to each other.  Try hard not to laugh.
• Practice good phone manners by taping your children as the pretend to answer the phone. Replay the taped portions for further instruction.
• Play dress-up.  I choose the clothes for you today and you choose my clothes for me.  From head to toe, dress in the outfit selected by another family member.  Courageously go out to dinner wearing these outfits.
• Tuck the children into bed and turn out the lights.  Then minutes later, come back into the bedroom with mugs of hot chocolate.
• Use large appliance boxes to create and indoor tree house.  Decorate the boxes with magic markers or paint.
• Make sweet music together.  Borrow a hymnal from your church and sing old time hymns a cappella or with piano accompaniment.
• Pass out old family pictures of great grandparents and great aunts and uncles.  Give one photo to each person.  Have them make up a story to go along with the photo.  Then tell the kids the real story behind the photo.  Then, tell the kids the real story behind the photo.
• Read the daily newspaper as a family.  Discuss the current events.
• Have an ABC party.  Choose one letter of the alphabet.  Everything at the part must begin with that letter.  For example: bubbles, balloons, bonfires, and bon bons.
• Teach your kids Pig Latin and speak with them this way for an hour.
• Collect postcards from local stores and gas stations.  Make up a scrapbook with these cards showing all the places your family has “traveled.”
• It’s your dime.  Allow each child to make a ten minute long distance call to anyone he or she chooses.
• Write letters to music artists or favorite children’s authors and request their autographs.
• Institute a no-sounds morning.  Everyone must be quiet from 9:00 A.M. until noon.  If they accomplish this, take them out to a kids’ media and arcade center.
• Have a spell down.  Call out words from the dictionary and take turns trying to spell each one.  Winner gets to pick dessert for that evening.
• Read the whole series of Dr. Seuss books in one sitting.
• Locate a baby name book and look up everyone’s name and its meaning.
• For one evening, allow your kids to stay up as late as they want.

Fun Together Outside

• Have a bubble blowing contest.  Pass out pieces of bubble gum (same number to each person).  Practice blowing for a few minutes.  Start a timer and see who can blow the biggest bubble in one minute.
• Play flashlight tag on a summer night.
• After a summer rain, go outside to collect earthworms for your favorite fisherman.
• Make jumbo ice cream cones and take them with you on a walk around the neighborhood.
• Roll small balls of chunky peanut butter into birdseed.  Place the balls on tree limbs for small animals and birds.
• Wash the car together getting as soapy and wet as possible in the process.
• Set up a lemonade stand.
• Take a walk in the rain (umbrellas optional).
• Sit under a sprinkler on a hot day.  See who can stay there the longest.
• Take a midnight walk armed with flashlights and mosquito repellent.
• Plant a tree.  Enlist the entire family’s help in selecting the type of tree and the site.  Take a picture of your family standing around the tree on the same date each year as a reminder of God’s faithful provision and promised growth.
• Fill a tub with water balloons.  Take it outside and prepare to get wet.
• Climb a tree with your kids.  Play “I spy” from the heights.
• Use a telescope to search the skies for familiar constellations.  Imagine the stars as works of art and try to form pictures from their positions.
• Weed the yard or garden.  Take turns hosing each other off.
• Fill a baby pool with water and dish soap.  Use bent hangers to create huge bubbles.  Run through the yard to create elongated bubble tunnels.
• Use jumbo sidewalk chalk to create sidewalk gardens, zoos, and murals of your family.
• Have a family fitness night.  Do push-ups, pull-ups, jumping jacks, sit-ups, and run around the block.
• Pick out special kites at the store, and then fly them as a family.
• Teach your children the fames you played as a child.  For example: hopscotch, string games, sidewalk tic-tac-toe.
• Bundle up and play flashlight tag on a winter night.
• Lay a blanket outside on the grass.  Have everyone lie down and take turns telling stories about the clouds.
• Purchase day-old pies at a discount bread store and have a pie fight.
• Bring out the croquet game and challenge your children to a contest.
• Teach your children how to build a campfire.  Be sure to teach fire safety. Roast marshmallows or hot dogs over the open fire.
• Design your own miniature golf course in your yard.  Lay empty soup cans on the side for holes.  Set up wooden skewers at each hole and attach a piece of construction paper shaped like a triangle with the hold number written on it.
• Pick up acorns, walnuts, and other nuts that fall from trees. Save these until midwinter, then place a big pile outside a window and watch for the squirrels to come and gather them up.
• Pack and play. Pack a bag lunch for your family.  Walk to a nearby park, eat, and then play.
• Have a neighborhood garage and bake sale, proceeds going toward a neighborhood carnival.
• After a few hours of yard work, fill a baby pool with dish soap and warm water. Let everyone sit around soaking their tired feet.

Fun with Food

• Open a box of Oreos and instruct your kids in the fine art of twisting the sides off and savoring each one. Chilled milk for dipping is a must.
• Take back returnable bottles and cans to a store.  Then peruse the grocery aisles in search of yummy treats to buy using the refund money.
• Use an old family recipe to bake a cake from scratch.  Hand out a knife to everyone and frost it together.
• Make Easter candy suckers by melting candy chips (found in cake decorating departments) and pouring into molds.
• Pick apples at a fruit farm.  Come home and teach your kids how to make a homemade apple pie.
• Bring in serving size bowls of clean snow.  Pour maple syrup over top.  Enjoy homemade snow cones.
• Have a backyard hobo dinner.  Dress up like hobos complete with carrying stick and bandana filled with eating utensils.
• Bake a batch of potatoes.  Invite friends over for a baked potato pot luck.  Each family brings a topping for the potatoes.
• Pour M&Ms or Skittles into a large serving bowl. Tell everyone to grab a handful.  For every piece of candy taken, each person must provide a compliment about others before eating.
• Make chocolate chip pancakes for dinner.  Tip with vanilla ice cream and a cherry.
• Buy a family size of assorted chocolates.  Take turns selecting one piece at a time until the box is gone.
• Bring out the fine china.  Serve and elegant tea part for your children and their friends.
• Make mud pies.  Then clean up and have real chocolate pie for dessert.
• Make grab bags filled with assorted candies and small toys.  Keep them tucked away for times when you have to say no more costly activities.
• Decorate miniature pumpkins with permanent, black markers.  Create a whole village of pumpkin people to set out on a front porch or to use as a table display.
• Bob for apples.  Wash the apples and push a wooden sucker stick into one end.  Dip them in melted caramel.
• Play dinner switch.  Kids cook.  Mom cleans up.
• Make pizza dough.  Shape it into hearts.  Let the kids put sauce, toppings, and cheese on their own heart-shaped pizza for Valentine’s Day.
• After a hot weather cleanup, cool down with root beer floats.
• Make a Fourth of July cake and decorate it with lighted sparklers.
• Use toothpicks and miniature marshmallows to create a farm house, barn, and fences.  Place animal crackers inside fences and barns.
• Create a pudding casserole by layering various flavors of pudding in a large serving bowl.  Allow each layer to set before pouring another flavor on top.  Hand out large spoons and dig in together.
• Make Popsicles.  Freeze grape juice in ice cube trays.  Place a Popsicle stick into each space.
• Make rainbow chocolate chip cookies.  Separate batter into four bowls.  Add different colors of food coloring.  Bake as usual.
• Play dress-up with food.  Hand out strings of red licorice and assorted circular cereal and candies.  String these edible decorations on the licorice strands.  Make bracelets, necklaces, or rings.  Eat as a snack later on.
• Buy several can of whipping cream.  Take turns making mustaches, beards, eyebrows, and exaggerated lips.  Kids can lick off the cream before it drops off.
• Make potato head people.  Use toothpicks, olives, raisins, lettuce, and marshmallows to create eyes, mouth, nose, and ears.
• Have a chocolate lunch or dinner.  Collect many different chocolate foods to serve for one meal.  Include: brownies, cookies, cake, ice cream, pudding, and candy.  Don’t forget the chocolate milk.
• Save up samples of new food products you receive by mail or purchase single serving sizes at a grocery store.  Have a “taste testing” meal.  Vote on the best tasting foods.
• Make a batch of bread dough.  Twist, braid, and mold the dough into fancy shaped rolls.  Sprinkle with poppy seeds, fresh parmesan cheese, or drizzle melted butter over top.  Bake and enjoy.
• During a family home movie night, pass out ice cream sundae dishes filled with favorite candies.  Serve with a spoon and a smile.
• Make popcorn.  Pour it into serving bowls and top with grated parmesan cheese, salted butter, cayenne pepper, or hot caramel sauce.
• Use fun shaped cookie cutters to transform plain lunch meat slices into a fancy feast.
• After you decorate a pumpkin, save the seeds.  Rinse them thoroughly, and then lay them flat overnight to dry.  Place them on a baking sheet, salt them, and bake on a low setting in an oven for several hours.  When they’re done, take them out and try them while they are still warm.
• Eat a meal of beans and rice for an entire day.  Explain that this type of food is the main diet for many Third World countries.
• Before everyone awakens, get up early and prepare a big breakfast.  Set the food on the table, complete with fine china tableware. Let them awaken to the smell of delicious food.

Fun Away from Home

• Call for schedules and costs, and then take a bus to another part of town.
• Get a roll of pennies from the bank.  Take turns tossing them into a water fountain at a nearby park.
• Go to an indoor ice skating rink on a hot summer day.
• Have a “no-occasion” tailgate party at a local park.
• Get your picture taken at photo booths inside shopping malls.  Display the photo strips on your refrigerator. Or, laminate them and use as bookmarks.
• Visit an art museum.  Take sketch pads and pencils to try your hand at drawing some of the displays.
• Visit a bakery and sample their wares.
• Tour the astronomy lab at a university.
• Stop by a working fire station.  Get a list of fire safety rules for the home, and then draw up a fire escape plan.
• Go to a drive-in movie.  Bring your own snacks from home.
• Save all pocket change for one month.  Count the money at the month’s end and select a place to go as a family.
• Plan a family fun outing costing $10.00 or less.
• Go bird watching at a park.  Take along binoculars.
• Hand out $2.00 to each person, and go to garage sales.  Each person should find a gift for every family member.  Exchange the gifts at home, explaining why the gifts were selected.
• To encourage a young reader, pay your child five cents every time he reads a new word while riding in the car.
• Get out your telephone directory and look for historical sites to visit in your area.
• Go to a local park and rent tandem bikes.
• Visit a working farm and help with the chores.
• In rotation, map out and visit every park and library in your area.
• Take a walk in the woods.  Try to identify as many kinds of trees as you can.  Take on leaf from each tree home and look in an encyclopedia to identify them.
• Visit your neighborhood park or play area.  Bring a box of ice cream cones, a container of ice cream, a scoop, and napkins.  Hand out cones to all the children there.
• Get a library card for everyone in your family.  Spend one hour a day reading as a family.

Fun Learning Activities

• Create an indoor garden using an old fish bowl or large pickle jar.  Fill the jar with potting soil, assorted small plants, and plastic toy figures for display.
• Take a CPR class as a family.
• Get a foreign language book for tourists.  Set this book out and only allow communication spoken in the foreign language.  Everyone must look up their words before they can speak.
• Layer colored sand in small glass jars.  Plant a tiny cactus inside.
• Learn sign language.  Demonstrate this new skill for friends and family at a “no-talking” sign language snack party.
• Go fishing.  Learn to fillet your catch and cook for dinner.
• Purchase small wooden birdhouses.  Paint them and then cover them with outdoor sealant.  Hang on tree limbs and watch for birds.
• Learn to make paper airplanes.  Have a paper airplane war.
• Begin a stamp collection.  Visit the post office for a starter collection.
• String popcorn and cranberries.  Hang them outside for a winter treat for birds.
• Learn to fold dinner napkins in fancy ways.
• Create ice candles using small cardboard milk cartons, melted wax, wick and chipped ice.  Place some wicking in the carton (tie the end to a pencil and set horizontally over milk carton top), fill the carton with ice, then pour melted wax over the ice.  Hint: melt crayons with wax to create color.
• Go outside with a glass jar and lid.  Use tweezers to gently pick up unusual bugs, and then look up information on the insects.
• Make thumbprint animal pictures.  Use stamp pads and thumbs.
• Train a guide dog for the blind.
• Pick wildflowers.  Hang flowers upside down in a dark closet until completely dry.  Spray with acrylic clear coating.  Arrange in a basket or hang from a peg.
• Gather seashells and sand into a bucket.  Make a fist-sized indentation, place a wick into the hole (tie one end of the wick to a pencil and lay the pencil horizontally across the top), and fill with melted wax—instant sand candles, complete with decorative shells.
• Create a family tree on poster board.  Place a photo of each person above their name on the chart.
• Learn to change both a tire and the oil in the car.  Do it as a family.
• Ask for old flowers from a florist.  Dry the petals on a flat surface.  Add a few drops of fragrant oil and mix.  Cut sis inch squares of mesh material.  Fill the mesh with dried flowers.  Secure with a ribbon.  Give them away as drawer sachets.
• Have an empathy day.  Pretend each family member is disabled, use an eye patch, tie an arm down to the side, put cotton in ears, use crutches to walk, etc.  Children will better understand those with real disabilities once they’ve spent an entire day with their own pretend disability.
• Make up a first-aid kit for your home and each car.
• Teach basic mending skills.  Sew on missing buttons and hem up look edges on pants, skirts, or dresses.
• Select book at the library for family members to read to each other.
• Borrow a hair cutting instruction video.  Be brave and cut your children’s hair.
• Collect in mesh fruit bad colorful ribbon, thread, yarn, and strips of cloth.  Hang the mesh bad outside for the birds to use for their nests.  Watch colorful bird nests appear!
• Purchase a flower pot and some grout.  Spread the grout evenly over the flower pot, and press in various trinkets or memorabilia like marbles, sea shells, or coins.  Let dry.  Try making a bird bath using the same method.
• Play dictionary stump.  Each person finds a difficult word.  Others must try and guess its meaning.  These words can be acted out in charade-like fashion.
• Practice first-aid skills such as treating burns, cuts, and broken bones.
• Get out a road map.  Teach your kids how to read it and estimate arrival time.
• Teach your children how to iron a shirt.
• Purchase wooden yo-yos at a craft supply store.  Decorate them with paints.  Once they’re dry, practice tricks using these “old-fashioned” yo-yos.
• Plan a fix-it day.  Bring all broken toys to the kitchen.  Get our basic tools like hammers, nails, screws, electrical tape, etc. Try to repair each one.
• Demonstrate the proper way to introduce new acquaintances and learn how to respond to these introductions.
• Use the Internet to “travel” by looking up faraway places and learn more about foreign lands and people.
• Borrow a line-dancing instructional video and practice together.
• Though they may never use it, show your son how to bow, your daughter how to curtsy.
• Teach your children the principle of tithing using ten dimes.  Mark paper cups with the words: tithe, save, and spend.  Allow your children to practice dropping coins into each cup.
• Take a ceramics class before Christmas.  Make and decorate new Christmas ornaments for display and to give as gifts.
• Get a video on self-defense and practice the skills as a family.
• Help your children develop entrepreneurial skills by encouraging them to create a home business or service for friends and neighbors.
• Combine learning with fun—rent or borrow biographical movies for a rainy day.

Fun Serving Others

• Raid your kitchen cupboards for non-favorites.  Take these foodstuffs to the nearest food shelter or contribute to your church’s food pantry.
• Rake leaves for a neighbor.  Don’t forget to stop and have a leaf fight every five minutes.
• Clean out storage areas.  Bundle up unwanted items for local thrift shops and deliver them.
• Surprise the neighbors and build a snowman in their yard.
• Set out the hot cocoa, enjoy a cut then bundle up and go rake leaves or shovel snow for an elderly neighbor.
• Send “we appreciate you” cards to the family’s doctors, dentists, teachers, pastors, and youth workers.
• Trade household chores for the day.  Mom does the kids’ chores and vice versa.
• Bake Valentine’s Day cookies for nursing home residents.
• Design Christmas cards and send them to the veterans at the VA hospital.  Include a family photo in the envelope for nurses to pass around to patients so they can put face to the names on the cards your family created.
• Send out “thank you for being you” cards to faithful friends.
• Adopt your neighborhood.  Wear gloves and bring large garbage bags to pick up roadside garbage.
• Write a family letter, each person contributing a paragraph, to distant relatives.  Address envelopes, make copies of the letter, and send.
• Write down scripture promises on pieces of paper.  Insert one promise into a balloon.  Blow up the balloons and let them go outdoors.  Send up a prayer or promise that will bring encouragement to the person who finds the balloon.
• Purchase plastic Easter eggs.  Fill them with candy and a resurrection scripture verse.  Hand out the eggs to neighborhood children.
• Create a circulating home video.  Tape a video of your family.  Send it to out-of-town family members with a list of other extended family and their addresses.
• Groom a cat or dog.  Ash a neighbor with an animal to let your assist him or her if you don’t own a pet.
• Offer to do some spring cleaning for an elderly neighbor.  Bring a midday snack to share with your host.
• Take a day to fast and pray for someone in need.  Explain to your children the biblical principle of combining fasting and prayer.
• Put everyone’s name in a hat.  Pass the hat around and have each person take a name.  For the entire weekend, play secret slave to the person whose name you’ve drawn.  Do as many chores and nice things as you can during those two days.
• Bring a friend home for lunch.  Ask each child to invite a friend over for a simple lunch and to play for the afternoon.
• Pick and pray.  Have each child pick out one person from church to pray for during the upcoming week.  Each night before bed, everyone should spend five minutes praying for that person.
• As your children get older, offer to baby-sit for an infant.  Teach your children how to care for the special needs of a baby.  Practice holding properly, diapering, and feeding the baby.
• Allow your children to teach neighborhood kids simple crafts at an afternoon craft class in your home.
• Allow your children to plan and host a tea party along with their friends for their moms.

From Going It Alone by Michele Howe. Copyright 1999 by Hendrickson Publishers

Michele’s most recent book is One Size Fits All. You may purchase it on Amazon