Posted by
Kingdom Kidz Ministry
Family night. What do they look like? What should we do? How often should my family be having them? These are all questions that are asked when it comes to family night. And quite honestly, family night looks like what you want it to look like. Sometimes it may be a devotional, sometimes a game night or an extended storytime. Sometimes it's a movie and popcorn night! As a young family with 3 little ones, we are still learning what our family night should look like. But one thing I do know is that my kids notice when we miss a week for whatever reason. They look forward to spending that quality time together. They enjoy all being in one room and taking part in the same task. However, I do understand how difficult it can be to fit in those times in the midst of sports schedule, work schedules, vacations and all the other obligations that fill our time. With that, we want to give you a couple of ideas that will maybe help you with your family night times.
Standing Together as Family
Matthew 12:25 says “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand."
- It is important to teach our families the importance of standing together and being on the same team. To demonstrate this, gather some legos or blocks.
- Begin building a house together.
- While building discuss what it means to be a team and how important it is to build one another up and encourage one another.
- When the house is complete, 2 people should take a part of the house and pull.
- What happens to the house? Our house will not stand if we are divided within our family. In order to stay strong as a family unit, we need to work together to build one another up in love.
Shining for Jesus (obtained from
www.kidsofintegrity.com)
You will need some dirty pennies, two small bowls, salt, vinegar, cotton swabs (the double-ended stick swabs) and a copy of these paragraphs to serve as your “instructions.”
- Begin by telling your children that you need to clean some pennies and you have read that you can use vinegar to clean them.
- Put some pennies in the bowl. Dip a cotton swab in vinegar and try to clean the pennies. (You might see a slight cleaning effect, but nothing significant.)
- Pretend that you are disappointed in the results. Then say, “I guess I should have read the instructions more carefully.” Consult your instructions and then say, “Now I understand! I was supposed to mix salt into the vinegar.”
- Now have your children help you stir 1 tsp. of salt into ¼ cup of vinegar. Have them stir until the salt is dissolved.
- When the salt is completely dissolved, allow your children to put the pennies into the mixture. You may need to stir the solution a bit, but the results will be startlingly different – your efforts will produce some clean and shiny pennies.
- Explain that we are like the vinegar and the salt is like the Holy Spirit. We can try to be obedient on our own, but it is hard to obey when we try to do it in our own strength. It is much easier to obey when we ask God for help from His Holy Spirit.
- Give each of your children a shiny penny to remind them how brightly their righteousness shines when they obey God.
Obedience is not and easy task for our children (or us!) and neither is the concept of the holy spirit. This is a great activity to show our children the importance obeying their parents, teachers, others in authority and more importantly, God.
Try these ideas and each switch it up...play some games, watch a movie, go to a local playground and climb the monkey bars together. The point is to spend quality time with your family and give your children your undivided attention. Have fun!
