Well, that sure was a whirlwind of a weekend. Anyone else feel this way? We have these kind of weekends every other week. We live super close to my sister and she has my nephew every other weekend. These weeks are our favorites because the kids play and entertain themselves. My sister and I cook and then we can sit back, relax and enjoy being adults.
It’s just nice. We stay in, have a good home cooked meal and occasionally enjoy a nice bottle of wine, or try out a new beer. It’s just so chill, we often laugh for hours and the kids run around having a ball.
It’s these kind of moments and memories I want my kids to look back on, remember and think about how awesome it was. At one point this weekend I was sitting back and just observing, and it got me thinking about family traditions.
For me, the one thing I can remember is being at home and having family dinners every night. Sure it got tricky as we got older and were involved in activities. But even then, I can still remember plenty of times that even if it was a quick drive through pick up, we still sat at the table, together and ate. No matter how fast it had to be.
So I was thinking, is this kind of tradition of sitting down for dinner and talking about day still a thing? I mean we do it. We always wait to have dinner together, even it it means we’re not eating until seven.
If we know it’s going to be late I’ll give the girls a small snack to tide them over, but dinner together is a sacred time for us.
Growing up we often talked about the high and low of our days, which I still do with my girls. But, sometimes I want to encourage more conversations with my girls.
I want to talk about other things to see what they’re thinking, how they’re feeling or what they can imagine. So I thought I’d put a list of family dinner table conversation starters to help you get the conversation going with your kids.
Before I get started we have a few rules at our table: no phones and no TV. Well our TV is on, but turned to a music channel. The girls take turns each night picking our dinner music.
15 Family Dinner Table Conversation Starters
- If you could be any animal, what would it be and why?
- What was the hardest thing you had to do today?
- What is your favorite family tradition? Why?
- If you could change one ting about our family, what would it be?
- What is the most important lesson your parents have taught you?
- If you could have a super power, what would it be? How would you use it?
- What’s one thing you can’t live without?
- What did you learn from a friend today?
- Where would you fly if you had wings?
- If you could plan a family trip, where would we go?
- What is your least favorite color? Name things that are this color?
- If you could only eat 1 thing for the rest of the month, what would it be?
- What was the nicest thing someone said to you today?
- What do you like most about the person to your right, left or across from you? (just pick one and rotate when you come back to this the next time?)
- Did anyone do something funny today, what was it?
This is just a small list of questions you can start with at dinner and see where they take you. As kids get older you can ask different style of questions. But these are fun topics that let your younger kids chat about things they may not think about.
Another idea we have done is take the letter they are working on for the week and see how many words we can come up. I have done this from dinner, to wind down and even until tuck-in time with Aria. It helps build their knowledge and vocabulary in a fun way.
I’d love to hear what you talk about about. What questions do you ask to get your kids talking? Add to the list by adding it in the comments below! If you know someone looking for ideas, be sure to share this post with them!
Thank you so much for stopping by and hope you have a great start to your week!
I'd love to hear your thoughts