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In our Strong Family series, we’ve discussed incorporating rest, dates, and vacations into your normal routine to create better opportunities to rebuild strength and serve the kingdom more effectively. We also shared our family’s practical and fun family movie and pizza night to inspire you to carve out time to spend with your family regularly.

In our last post, I promised to help with family game nights, too! Not everyone loves movies, and some don’t feel like watching a movie together even counts as bonding. I let this slide (and don’t lose friendships over it)!

An alternative to "Pizza Movie Night" is...

Pizza Game Night! (Or tacos, pasta, burgers—whatever you like!)

As a family with 8 children, game nights have been either painful or chaotic, but now, with children ages 6-16, we are finally getting a handle on things. I no longer want to run screaming from game nights, and I hope this encourages you if you still do!

Game Ideas by Age Group:

Ages 2-5 (Challenging but fun, especially with older siblings helping)

• Matching Games
• Go Fish
• War
• Trouble

Ages 6-9 (It starts to get fun!)

• Sorry
• Monopoly Deal
• Life
• Garbage
• Spoons
• Disney Trivia

Ages 10-Teen (Now it’s REALLY fun!)

Full disclosure: I hate some of the games my teenage boys love, so here are the ones the grown-ups play with the kids and young adults in our house:

• Risk Strike
• Risk
• Cash Flow (My favorite, and we use it for finance education too)
• Monopoly Deal (But more intense, LOL!)
• Banana Grams (Start when they can spell and read, but it gets even more fun at this age)
• Trivial Pursuit (Any junior version is fun; the adult ones are educational)
• Scrabble (Surprisingly, some kids LOVE this!)
• Cribbage (Starts around age 7, but really fun by age 10!)

Because there are so many of us, family game night often involves different groups playing in the same room, switching games and people. It’s a great way to talk and have fun with your children.

Important Sidenotes:

• We’ve incorporated more games into our lives and try to limit screen time during the school week. If there’s dead time, I’ll ask a child to play Speed or a longer game like Cash Flow to fill their cup with quality time.
• I dislike some of these games, but I play them to watch others enjoy them and to practice compromise.
• Creating this atmosphere has turned our house into a game-playing home. I often look up and see two or three children playing cards or Sorry. My children even ask to play Cash Flow for all or part of their math for the day once a week!

Relationship building is hard to pursue when everyone is on their own schedule, rushing around town at 1000 miles per hour.

Being intentional with family relationships on a regular basis is preventive care for restorative ministries in the future!

Thank you so much for sharing your time with us. Cedar Creek Ministries is funded by Christians and churches who believe in the call to offer our leaders the double portion!  If you feel the desire to make sure all those men and women called to serve God in missions and ministry have everything they need to personally rest, restore family relationships, and revive ministry vision, consider joining us in regular prayer and financial support!

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This post was written by Nickole Perry, co-founder and Director of Operations at Cedar Creek Ministries.