Revive Family Night and Watch Your Stress Level Plummet

by Brenna Liebold

Happy and healthy families play together regularly. Yup! Adults and teens, too. Across the lifespan, the quality of your family life serves as an indicator of your overall health. Specifically, engaging in interactive activities with family members appears to boost your well-being. What's more, children and parents learn how to effectively communicate with and understand one another, work as a team to solve problems, and build trust.

​Children perceive meaningful, interactive time spent with their parents as a form of affection that establishes confidence, strengthens resilience in the face of challenges, and shapes their personalities. Play also serves the particularly important purpose of reinforcing budding academic, motor, and social skills in children. Furthermore, spending time together prevents teenagers from resorting to drug use and other troublesome behaviors.

Investing in family playtime reaps benefits for parents as well by reducing stress and anxiety. You pack even more of a stress-relieving punch into your quality time if you squeeze in a laugh or two.

Although researchers saw a climb in the amount of time families spent together in recent years, they also noted a sharp decline in the amount of time family members interacted with one another. Experts believe that the increasingly common routine of rushing kids from music lessons to softball practice, grabbing take-out on the way home, and settling in on the couch with individual digital devices explains the aforementioned statistics.

Researchers found an increase in the amount of time families spend in proximity with one another but a decrease in interactions.

To make a shift away from this trend, focus on creating moments spent in meaningful interaction with one another. This type of connection may take the form of wildly entertaining storytelling at the dinner table (let your child take the lead on this one), discussing a song on the radio, picking out a gift for another member of the family, or hunting for bugs or flowers or whatever your child currently collects. To make this list of activities successfully engaging, start from your child's point of interest. If you insist that your child watch a game on television with you, for example, but your child does not share this interest, neither of you will enjoy the experience nor interact very much. Kids look pretty selfish in this light, right? In fairness, as a pretty advanced skill, selflessness requires plenty of time and good examples to flourish within a child's personality.

Planning a family night helps parents set aside a specific window of time and stay accountable for following through on providing something that the whole family needs to thrive. Nobody forgets, arranges competing obligations, or otherwise avoids it when everyone knows about it. In addition, anticipating something fun provides a buffer against stress in the days leading up to the event. Now, on to my top five picks for music activities to thrill everyone at your next family fun night.

music activity #1:
Dance Contest

Don't shy away from this suggestion! Kids derive immense benefit from movement, making a dance contest my first choice for family activities. Implement a "no Facebook pictures rule" if needed for self-conscious adults to feel comfortable. I highly recommend that you start the night with dancing unless the family ate less than 30 minutes prior. As the night goes on, ease into more relaxing activities, so you don't wind up with wired kids at bedtime.

Prep & Materials Needed:

• Download, print, and assemble the score strip below for each family member. Instructions provided on the printout.​

click to download

• Designate one family member to keep track of each person's scores.
• Let everyone contribute to a Spotify, iTunes, or other playlist with their favorite dance songs.
• Choose the prize awarded to the best dancer, allowing for individual preferences, as different family members will find motivation in different rewards. Perhaps adding an extra hour to bedtime or curfew for the kids?

Playtime in Action:
Each family member gets a chance to show off their best dance moves to a favorite song. After each performance, the rest of the family holds up their rating strips to give a score to the performance. The scorekeeper tallies the points, and the person with the most points at the end of the contest wins. Break a tie with another round of dancing for the two contestants or a choreographed memory sequence. That means each dancer adds a move to a series of movements. The next dancer must repeat and add a movement, taking turns until a dancer slips up on recalling the moves in the correct order.

Bonus Benefits:
What a great opportunity to learn about or explore your child's music preferences, especially teenaged children! Movement keeps young kids engaged in an activity and burns off extra energy. It also helps them refine gross motor skills, particularly coordinating simultaneous movements of upper and lower body. Adults benefit, too, from the short bursts of exercise at a low to moderate intensity. Together, movement and music melt away stress with incredible speed! Stay within your physical limits, though. No need to show off for the kiddos. ;)

music activity #2:
Bean Bag Monster (Bean Bag Catch)

Young children love the song I wrote to accompany this game, and adults get encouragement to be silly. Immerse yourselves in the preparation for this game as part of the fun. First, you'll need to create a "monster" to catch bean bags. Although I provide some ideas below, let your creativity flow!

Prep & Materials Needed:

• Gather an assortment of bean bags of various colors.
• Make a monster to catch the bean bags. See the four ideas below to get you started. Hint: if you draw a monster on your hands, use non-toxic, dry-erase markers to make removal fast and easy.

click to enlarge

Playtime in Action:
Play or learn the "Bean Bag Monster" song below. Take turns throwing bean bags from and catching them in the monster's mouth. The song lyrics provide cues to incorporate additional actions such as throwing bean bags of a specific color, "eating" the bean bags (nom-nom), making silly faces (eeeeew!), and picking your favorite color.

"Bean Bag Monster"

Bonus Benefits:
Imaginative children shine when allowed to indulge their imaginations to create their monster. This game also helps young children develop motor skills, from grasping and releasing bean bags in the monster's mouth (fine motor) to throwing bean bags at a target (gross motor and hand-eye coordination). Catching using hands offers the lowest level of difficulty. To provide more of a challenge, catch the bean bags inside a large item like the reusable storage container with a lid, followed by increasingly smaller items such as the paper cups.

music activity #3:
Mad-Lib Songwriting

Creating music brings people together in a very unique and touching way. Each person contributes a piece of him/herself to the bigger picture, a sensory work of art that everyone experiences simultaneously. Don't worry, I made this activity as accessible as possible for family members of all ages and musical skills.

Prep & Materials Needed:

• Bookmark this page for quick access to the interactive Mad-lib Songwriting activity and backing track recordings.

Playtime in Action:

Play the backing tracks below to provide a karaoke-style experience as you sing your new song lyrics.

"House of the Rising Sun" Backing Track

"Take Me Out to the Ballgame" Backing Track

"Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" Backing Track

Bonus Benefits:
Singing makes you feel good, and young children won't care how you sound. Don't let a teenager, whose reluctance to participate most likely stems from lack of confidence, make you feel judged! Singing together presents an opportunity to build your children's confidence by trying new things, and YOU lead the way by example. Own your voice and enjoy the satisfaction of wrong notes with flare, goofy lyrics, and awkward phrasing. They will inevitably happen, and everyone will share both the blame and the amusement of it all. 

music activity #4:
Musical Jeoparody

You read that correctly. As a musical version of the popular gameshow, this activity "parodies" Jeopardy®. This game offers a solution for families with a teenager that rolls his/her eyes at family night and resists participating. Make your teen the host of the game! The host role requires a family member to interact with the app that accompanies this activity to create sound effects and keep gameplay moving forward. Adult members of the (extended) family will surely find amusement in this game as well.

Prep & Materials Needed:

• Gather noisemakers either for each team or each family member, depending on how you wish to play, to clearly distinguish players when they alert the host to provide a response during the game.
• Download and print the scorecard and rules below to familiarize yourself with the game beforehand.

click to download

• Designate a host and scorekeeper. Whether the same or separate individuals, they may still participate in the game if desired.
• Bookmark this page for quick access to the online Music Jeoparody Game.
• Display this webpage on your TV screen as an optional step. Hook up a computer to your TV with an HDMI cable, cast a tablet or smartphone to a Smart TV, or type this page's link into the web browser on a gaming console.

Playtime in Action:

You might prefer to explore the game app rather than read all of the rules, which will suffice for most people. However, every once in a while you may play with a serious gamer that insists on keeping the rules nearby. In an abridged version of the rules, you'll respond to music trivia clues in the form of a question. Correct responses earn imaginary money, which you'll wager later on in a final round. The family member who ends the game with the most money wins whatever you'd like to present as an award.

Bonus Benefits:
Games like this offer many hidden benefits including the chance for teenagers to explore constructive, positive leadership roles as the host or scorekeeper. Speaking of the scorekeeper, this person gets to practice addition and subtraction. Young children also gain experience in turn-taking, a skill related to sharing but with regard to time and attention instead of tangible items. Additionally, problem-solving in a team spotlights the process of considering everyone's input and collectively deciding on a single course of action. This game rallies a host of advanced, real-world skills.

music activity #5:
The Hungry Wolf Finger Puppet Musical

This activity eases parents into imaginative play, a skill often discarded in adulthood, by using a storytelling song as a script. Feel free to invent additional story lines and dialogue with your children from there.

Prep & Materials Needed:

• Bookmark this page for quick access to "The Hungry Wolf' story-song.
• Download and print the finger puppet pattern below.

click to download

• Gather double-sided tape and crayons, colored pencils, or markers to color and assemble the finger puppets. You'll find detailed assembly instructions on the printout.

Playtime in Action:
Play the recording below of "The Hungry Wolf" as each family member acts out the story with a finger puppet. Then, continue the tale together. Add more animals (and puppets) to the story, create a new adventure for one of the animals, devise a scenario in which all of the characters enjoy a happy ending, etc.

"The Hungry Wolf"

Bonus Benefits:
This activity lends itself well to working through real-life situations with children by exploring different outcomes associated with specific actions in a safe, fun environment. Role-playing also allows children to practice problem-solving, communication, and empathy. This type of play definitely fosters creativity in children, giving them a tool to defuse intense emotional experiences and relax on their own. Pretty deep, huh?

Go for It, and Make Today a Great Day!

Designate a night in the next two weeks to invest time in your family that will leave a lasting impression on your children's development and the whole family's health and happiness. Post your tried-and-true games, crafts, etc. in the comments below for everyone to enjoy, too.

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