Family Day is celebrated on September 26 this year, it’s a day dedicated to eating dinner together as a family. Eating dinner together is one of the best ways to build and maintain strong relationships with your children. Frequent family dinners are linked to lower rates of substance use and misuse, decreased stress, higher self-esteem, and better academic performance in school. Teens who have more than three family dinners per week are 3.5 times less likely to have used prescriptions drugs and 3 times less likely to have used marijuana. (fmi.org) Try out this game and some conversation starters to make family dinner a little more fun:
Pass the Page
Pass the Page is a collaborative drawing game where your family can work together to create a piece of art! You’ll need a piece of paper and some crayons, pencils, or whatever art supplies you prefer. The goal is to have each person add just one element to the drawing at a time. You can use the guideline of not lifting your pencil from the paper -- once you’ve lifted it, your turn is over. Keep passing the paper to the right as many times as needed until you all agree the drawing is finished. You might be surprised at what you come up with together!
10 conversation starters:
1. What was your favorite thing you did today?
2. What did you do today that you’re proud of?
3. What happened today to make you laugh?
4. What did you learn today that you think I don’t know?
5. If you could take a class in anything, what would it be?
6. What was the hardest thing you did today?
7. If you made the school rules, what would your top 3 be?
8. What are you most looking forward to this week?
9. What are you most nervous about this week?
10. What are your top 3 wishes for this week?