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The current pandemic we’re facing means we’re spending more time than ever in the confines of our homes. With no after school activities and no opportunities to dine out, we’re gathering around our dinner tables every day.
Mealtimes have the potential to draw us together. But what if you have young, active children who won’t sit still, or teens that don’t feel like talking. Mealtimes can be a stressful part of your day. If you want to learn, laugh, and love during meals, you’re in the right place. Here are ten family dinner table activities to enjoy mealtimes.
10 Dinner Table Activities to Enjoy Mealtimes
1. Read Aloud
Nothing calms down chaos than reading aloud. My son may be spinning around the room, but the moment I pull out a book, he gravitates back to his chair and starts eating and listening. This is one of the easiest family dinner table activities to do.
Find a story that your whole family can enjoy. Positive or funny books are best at times like this when life feels scary and unsettling. This is a great way to escape into another world free of worries and see the beauty in life. Mr. Popper’s Penguins, Homer Price, and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle are a few of our favorites.
Don’t worry about a book being too advanced. Young children can learn much more than we realize from reading aloud. Listening comprehension is always much greater than reading comprehension. And young children will love the soothing effects of your voice as it swings up and down to the rhythm of the text even if they don’t catch the meaning of everything you say.
2. Learn New Vocabulary
Children learn vocabulary naturally, but using a direct approach helps too. Learning vocabulary at the dinner table is fun when you’re learning together as a family. One of my favorite resources is Marie’s Words (affiliate link). This set of 550 vocabulary word cards are intended to help kids prepare for the SAT.
Marie’s Words are not your typical boring vocabulary cards with words and definitions. Each card has a creative, colorful illustration that aids your visual memory to learn the words easier.
On the back of each card is the pronunciation and part of speech. There’s an example of the word used in a sentence. And, each word has three synonyms and antonyms provided to help you understand the meaning even more.
The cards are not thick, so I recommend laminating them before use. If you don’t have a laminator and can afford to get one, this one is portable and reasonably priced. (affiliate link) It’s the one we use for our homeschool needs. You have to purchase the laminating sheets separately.
For our family, I put a stack of cards in a small plastic bin labeled “To Learn.” As we learn words we add them to another bin labeled, “To Review.”
How many new cards you want to tackle each week is up to you. We learn about two new words per week and go through the words in the review bin. A way to get younger ones involved is to give them the job of choosing the new words for the week.
3. Tell One Thing
Tell one thing another one of those simple family dinner table activities. Take turns going around telling one thing you learned today. It’s not limited to school learning. Maybe you learned something new about another member of the family or your child noticed something new outside while playing. Sharing what we’re learning encourages an atmosphere of inquisitiveness.
4. Start a Prayer Box
This dinner table activity teaches empathy and compassion for others. Find a box and gather some index cards. Have everyone write down the name of someone they’d like to pray for. You can start with family members and extend to friends and people in your community that your kids know. You can keep your prayer box devoted to individuals, or broaden it to people groups around the world, social issues, and other concerns.
For young kids, you can print out photos of people to glue onto the index cards to give faces to the names. At mealtime, each member of the family can pull out a card and pray for that person. Or open it up for anyone to say a prayer.
An alternate idea is to make a prayer banner on your wall. Using some string and clothespins, hang up the names or photos of the people you are praying for that week.
5. Tell Jokes and Riddles
Another fun dinner table activity that younger kids will especially enjoy is telling jokes. Put out some joke books and let everyone take turns sharing a joke.
Riddles are also fun. These mind puzzles require more concentration and are great for kids who love to think. Here’s a riddle book (affiliate link) we just ordered to add to our library this spring.
6. Have a Family Meeting
I first learned about family meetings after reading Positive Discipline by Jane Nelsen, Ed.D. Family meetings are a place to talk about problems, brainstorm ideas for solving them, choose a solution by consensus, and implement the solution. Cooperation and closeness can result from these family meetings.
Family meetings are held once a week. Family members rotate the roles of chairperson and secretary each week. First, the meeting starts with everyone sharing compliments. Next, the chairperson leads a problem solving session for the next problem on the agenda. (The agenda is posted somewhere in the house during the week so that kids and parents can add problems to the agenda as they come up). After agreeing on a plan of action, it’s time to plan family fun. Finally, there’s time to discuss chores. In our family meetings, we also talk about everyone’s schedule for the upcoming week.
Family meetings can be hard to implement. It takes time to introduce the different components of a family meeting. Meetings take effort and consistency, something we’ve struggled with in our family. But if you can push through the challenges, and make it a weekly ritual, the payoff is worth it.
7. Memorize Poetry
Do you have a favorite poem? Memorizing poetry is another activity that can draw you together as a family. Repeating lines of a poem in unison until you’ve mastered it can be a fun way to spend your mealtime. Challenge each other to recite the poem without looking at the words.
You don’t have to restrict yourselves to poetry. My daughter was recently memorizing a speech from Shakespeare’s Julius Ceasar and unbeknown to us, her little brother was listening. He recited the first two lines in no time surprising us all!
8. Ask Questions
Sometimes we are at a loss as to how to start conversations with our kids. We’re currently using the Melissa and Doug Family Dinner Box of Questions that we picked up at our local thrift store to get to know each other more. There are 82 questions to spark conversation around the dinner table.
Here’s a set of conversation cards from Tabletopics Family (affiliate link) that has 135 questions ranging from silly to serious.
9. Host an Online Dinner
Being homebound or in quarantine doesn’t mean you can’t get together with loved ones for dinner. Host an online dinner party. Set up a zoom call with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins or close family friends you miss.
We’ve been “eating” with grandparents on a weekly basis. We’ve even had an aunt and uncle in California join us. It can make for a crazy meal, everyone crowded around one end of the table trying not to talk over each other. But having the opportunity to see people we love during a difficult time can help us and our children feel more connected and loved.
10. Share the Best and Worst
This family dinner table activity doesn’t require any materials. Go around the table sharing the best thing about your day and the worst. Try coming up with a creative name, like “gratefuls and grumbles” or “thumbs up, thumbs down.” This practice helps everyone reflect on his/her day. It also shows kids that’s it’s okay to have feelings. Sometimes we shy away from the negative. But feelings are just feelings. It’s good to help our kids express them.
Maybe your mealtimes are chaotic because you have a large family with a wide range of ages, and you need ways to calm and connect. Or maybe you want ideas to add variety to your time together at the table. Whatever the reason, these ten family dinner table activities to enjoy mealtimes is a place to start. Your family will be learning, loving and laughing together in no time. Happy eating!
