Family Winter Church Activities
- Gather around comfort food for some good old-fashioned bonding among families. In the past, having church pitch-ins after Sunday service was commonplace. Bring back the tradition by assigning dishes to specific letters of everyone's last names. Families are sure to bond with each other over the homemade dishes and impromptu recipe exchanges.
- Families break outside their individual units and start to open up with each other through fun ice breakers. Simple games like guess the historical figure facilitate interaction. Pin the name of a person from Bible history on each family member's back and have families ask each other questions until they guess who's their historical character.
- Create new ways to present family Bible lessons and make it more of an activity. Center studies around a popular movie, such as "Pirates of the Caribbean" or "Shrek," and match the movie's moral of the story to a Bible theme. Have families recreate popular scenes and present them to each other as you tie in the overall point of the lesson.
- Rather than letting the kids run loose playing basketball or tag while the parents sit around and chat, gather everyone together for a specific game. For example, divide families into four teams and have each team go to the corner of a square room. When you say go, each family races to their opposite corner. Inevitably, a traffic jam ensues in the middle and causes hilarity. Mix up how the families get from one side to the other by either holding hands, hopping or something similar.
- Fun At Church says putting together Olympic events is a fun youth activity. Include the family by making it a team sport. Many sports can be recreated for fun indoors. The Fun at Church website suggests playing a hockey game with an egg and popsicle sticks and sumo wrestling with over-sized sweatpants full of balloons. Pick up gold, silver and bronze medals for the winners at a local party supply store and create fun prizes for the runners up.
