How to Have a Family Movie Night

Food, fun and flicks make for a great family evening.

Family movie night is a great way to spend time together with all of your children at once as well as your spouse. This is a great weekly or monthly tradition, and the planning can be just as much fun as the event itself. Once you start having a regular family movie night, you'll find that the entire family looks forward to relaxing and hanging out together.

Things You'll Need

• Your family Movie treats Movies

Instructions

1. Decide how often you will have your family movie night. If you have young children, you might have family movie night every week. If your children are old enough to date or go out with friends on weekends, you might elect to have it once or twice a month. Whenever you decide to have your movie night, make it a tradition that the kids and adults plan around. For example, you might have it the first Friday of each month. Make it a weekend night so that you do not have to worry about being tired at work or school the next day.

2. Select a movie or a theme with the whole family. At dinner a few days before your movie night, decide what types of movies you are going to watch. If you only watch one movie, then select that film at this time. This will give you a chance to prepare themed movie snacks if you want, or to search out a variety of movie titles if you are going to watch several movies in a row. For example, in October you might have a "ghost fest" or in February you might watch romantic comedies. You can also have a sports night, a girls' night or a comedy night.

3. Make sure there is plenty of food. Order dinner in so that you do not have to worry about cooking and can just hang out with the family. Make snacks that you can prepare ahead of time like vegetable plates, cheese and crackers, popcorn and mini candy bars. This is your family's "night out" and your night off, so anything that you cannot do ahead of time, you should skip for the evening.

4. Talk about how much fun you will have at the movie night. Get everyone in an excited, anticipatory mood for your movie night. This will help form the tradition faster, and also help teens remember that they need to plan to stay in on movie night.

5. Insist that everyone attend. Do not allow children or adults to skip out on movie night. Because it will be on a weekend night, there should not be tests to study for and dates can be arranged around the event. The same goes for meetings and other office work. Obviously, there may be occasional exceptions, but it is important that you all live up to your responsibility to attend the event so that you can have this fun time together as a family.

Tips & Warnings

• If your children are far apart in age, then you might select two films: one juvenile one to be viewed with everyone, then an older one to watch with just your older child after the younger one has been put to bed. This way, everyone spends time together, and you get the added benefit of hanging out with your teen alone for a while as well.

• Make sure that the movies you select contain content that you are comfortable discussing with your children.