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Fun From Home

Family Challenge

Running out of ideas for having fun at home?

 

Take the FamiliesAlive Fun From Home Family Challenge!

 

How It Works

 

This challenge entry period has ended, but we hope these ideas will continue to inspire your family to have fun together.

We’d love to see how your family participates! Use the hashtag #funfromhomefamilychallenge and email your photos to [email protected].

Week One Challenges

#funfromhomefamilychallenge

Dust off those photo albums (or open up your photo app), and gather as a family. Look at the pictures together, talk about them, remember and share the stories behind them. If there’s a way to do a video call with Grandma and Grandpa to include them in this trip-down-memory-lane time, do it!  

Everybody go wash your feet first! Pull out your favorite lotions and oils, and rub each other’s feet. If you and your family are totally grossed out by this, keep socks on. This is a great way to serve each other. 

Have everyone participate in setting up an obstacle course in your backyard, your basement, or even your living room. Once it’s set up, time each family member as they go through it. Be creative and have fun. 

Spend some time as a family memorizing Scripture. Sit together each morning or evening and work on it. We’ve included a few passages as options, but feel free to choose your own. If you have younger children, memorize smaller portions. Older children? Memorize whole chunks. Each week, we’ll include Scripture memory as a family challenge. Try a new passage each week. And, feel to take an entire year to work on multiple portions of Scripture together. 

  • Isaiah 43:1-3
  • Psalm 23
  • Joshua 1:9
  • Joshua 24:15
  • Romans 8:31-39
  • Ephesians 3:16-21
  • Ephesians 2:1-10
  • Romans 3:21-26
  • Psalm 46
  • Psalm 121

Challenge 5: Make Your Own Pizza Night

Find out ahead of time what ingredients everyone would like. Pull those out, or buy them. Gather together in the kitchen. For families with youngers, all work together to make pizzas. If you’re daring, and are working from scratch, make individual-size pizzas, so everyone can enjoy their own toppings. Otherwise, build a pizza that has varying ingredients (like ½ pepperoni, ½ cheese, etc). For families with older children, have each family member write on a slip of paper their name and what ingredients they’d like on their pizza. Put those slips of paper into a hat and draw names. Whatever name you choose is the pizza you create (or the ½ pizza you create). 

Once pizzas are created, feel free to picnic together family-room style, with a favorite show or movie on the screen. 

Challenge 6: Board Game Buy

Sit together, pray and talk about a family you can do something kind for. If you have the means, choose multiple families. Then pick a favorite family board game, find it online (Amazon is our go-to), order it, and have it shipped as quickly as possible to the family you choose together.     

Challenge 7: Family Letters

Spend some time writing letters (or notes) to family members who don’t live under your roof. Write them to those who live in town AND out of town. Write to as many as you can. As you seal up each letter to send, pray together for those family members. Families with youngers, let them color pictures to go with letters Mom or Dad write. 

Challenge 8: Dance Party

Let loose and dance together. If you’re competitive, feel free to turn this into a fun family competition, letting each family member choose his/her own song (as long as it’s appropriate), and have a dance-off. OR, no competition, and just dance. Choose different types of music – do a little hip hop, ballet, swing dance (or just slow dance), worship dance, breakdance (if you’re actually talented enough to do this). Just have some fun!

Challenge 9: Bedroom Decor

Work together to do something special to decorate a child’s bedroom. Feel free to go all out, and order lights and wall hangings online. BUT, most of us will just use art supplies – decorate with streamers and balloons, construction paper chains. Be creative. Work together. Bless one of the kids in your home. If this is a hit, pick a child’s bedroom each week of the challenge to decorate together. 

Challenge 10: Scenic Drive

Get out of your house for a little while, go for a drive. Make it scenic and point out the beauty that our Lord has created for us to enjoy. Spring has sprung for many of us, so take in the changing season together. Pop some popcorn for a snack, and pack some special drinks. Enjoy the glory of God’s creation together. 

Week Two Challenges

#funfromhomefamilychallenge

Build a human pyramid (family-style) together and snap a selfie of it! You can include pets and/or stuffed animals if you don’t have enough people.

Write a limerick or haiku together about being quarantined. Or, have each person write a limerick or haiku and hold a friendly family competition, giving awards for funniest, sweetest, best vocabulary (just make sure everyone gets an award!) And don’t forget to share your creations with FamiliesAlive!

Bake cookies, bread, or small batches of White Chocolate Party Mix (an easy, yummy Shultz family favorite!). OR buy a small gift. Leave this gift of love on a neighbor’s porch. Feel free to leave these gifts of love all around your neighborhood on porches. Attach a note that says “Jesus Loves You” or “Somebody Loves You”.  

This one goes hand in hand with Challenge #5! If you have a fire pit or fire bowl in your backyard, get a fire going one evening. Pull out the s’mores ingredients, and enjoy this time together! If you don’t have access to a backyard or a firepit, use this recipe for an oven s’mores dip.

Challenge 5: Campfire Sing

While enjoying your s’mores, sing some songs around the campfire. Feel free to sing hymns, praise songs, and traditional campfire songs. Again, if you don’t have access to a backyard or a firepit, take an evening walk (after enjoying your s’mores dip) and sing while you walk. You could also just gather in a candlelit, cozy room to sing – put on this campfire video from YouTube for ambiance.

Challenge 6: Scripture Memory

Spend some time as a family memorizing Scripture. Sit together each morning or evening and work on it. We’ve included a few passages as options, but feel free to choose your own. If you have younger children, memorize smaller portions. Olders? Memorize whole chunks. Each week, we’ll include Scripture memory as a family challenge. Try a new passage each week. And, feel to take an entire year to work on multiple portions of Scripture together. 

  • Isaiah 43:1-3

  • Psalm 23

  • Joshua 1:9

  • Joshua 24:15

  • Romans 8:31-39

  • Ephesians 3:16-21

  • Ephesians 2:1-10

  • Romans 3:21-26

  • Psalm 46

  • Psalm 121   

Challenge 7: Letters to Friends

Spend some time writing letters (or notes) to friends. Write them to those who live in town AND out of town. Write to as many as you can. As you seal up each letter to send, pray together for those friends. Families with youngers, let them color pictures to go with letters Mom or Dad write. 

Challenge 8: Card Games

Learn a new card game and play it together. Here are a whole bunch of ideas for all ages.

Challenge 9: One, (Uno, Une, Ein, Moja)

Learn together how to count to ten in three different languages.

Challenge 10: Breakfast in Bed

Serve your kids, or have kids serve one parent (or parents) by making breakfast and delivering it in bed. Pick favorite breakfast foods, provide juice, fold a napkin in a special way with love, put a little flower in a vase on a tray. Just serve and love with this challenge.

Week Three Challenges

#funfromhomefamilychallenge

FamiliesAlive won’t be giving out a special prize for the most pushups or even the most creative pushups, but feel free to hold your own friendly, family competition with prizes. Just have fun, be creative, test yourselves.

Pick a Bible story that your family loves (or find a new one you don’t know well). Then have fun making puppets out of old or single socks. Use sharpies, googly-eyes, glue on yarn for hair. Perform a sock puppet show of the Bible story you chose. Upload a video of your show for an extra entry for this week’s prize!

Encourage all family members to draw hearts and/or write notes of love, and leave them around the house for other family members to find. Dad write a love note to a teen daughter, and tape it to her bathroom mirror. Mom write a love note to a toddler son, and put it on his pillow. Son write a love note (or just draw a heart), and tape it to the refrigerator. You get the idea.

In the age of the digital camera and smartphone, it’s easy to delete pics. So, let everyone in your family take a turn at snapping some pictures. Have your children get dressed up. Find a beautiful location outdoors. Get pics of everyone separately, get pics of siblings together, get pics of Mom with daughters, get pics of Dad with sons (and vice versa). If you are a single-parent home, get pics of the parent with each child separately. Let your children choose fun poses. If you have a senior, surprise them later with prints of their “senior pictures”. Just have some fun getting pictures, photo-shoot style. 

Challenge 5: Family Walk

We’ve probably all done plenty of walking, but I’ve noticed some of our neighbors “slowing down” when it comes to family walks. Get back out there! Try to take a family walk every morning or every evening this week through your neighborhood. Take time to greet neighbors as you walk.

Challenge 6: Scripture Memory

Spend some time as a family memorizing Scripture. Sit together each morning or evening and work on it. We’ve included a few passages as options, but feel free to choose your own. If you have younger children, memorize smaller portions. Olders? Memorize whole chunks. Each week, we’ll include Scripture memory as a family challenge. Try a new passage each week. And, feel to take an entire year to work on multiple portions of Scripture together. 

  • Isaiah 43:1-3

  • Psalm 23

  • Joshua 1:9

  • Joshua 24:15

  • Romans 8:31-39

  • Ephesians 3:16-21

  • Ephesians 2:1-10

  • Romans 3:21-26

  • Psalm 46

  • Psalm 121   

Challenge 7: Trash Pick-Up

Walk through your neighborhood and pick up trash. If parks have reopened near you, feel free to walk through a park and pick up trash. Serve your neighbors in this way.

Challenge 8: Tea Time

Have a tea party (call it afternoon tea if your kids are older). Set out good dishes, get dressed up if you’d like, put out platters of fruit, cheese, and/or treats. Make some different teas, and sit together, have older siblings serve younger siblings.

Challenge 9: One-Sentence Stories

Gather together in a circle (this is a fun campfire activity). One person starts making up a story, by sharing one sentence only. Just go around the circle, adding one sentence at a time, until you have a completed story.

Challenge 10: Pray for Your Politicians

This is such an unprecedented time in the history of our nation. It’s easy to complain about what isn’t being done right or well (according to what we think). One thing’s for sure – it can’t be easy to make decisions that impact so many people, especially in new territory. Together, look up the names of your local politicians – governor, mayor, senators, etc. Then pray for them by name. Let’s show our children that we have a God we can trust, a God we can talk to, a God who will help those we pray for.

Week Four Challenges

#funfromhomefamilychallenge

If you’ve already been playing games, and feeling “gamed out” over your regular game-playing, choose a different game. Keep playing games together! 

Serve an elderly neighbor by showing up as a family and doing some needed yard work for them.

Take a beloved hymn (or praise song) and turn it into a rap. Include grandparents via a Zoom call, so they can participate. Video your family rapping this hymn to enjoy for years to come. Upload it and share with us for an extra entry into this week’s drawing. 

Have each family member prepare something to share with the rest of your family in a talent show. It can be singing, dancing, recorder-playing, poetry-reciting, lipsync-ing, painting, tumbling, sport stacking, stilts-walking. Be creative. Have fun. Include grandparents or cousins or whomever you’d like to include via a Zoom call, so they can participate. 

Challenge 5: Room Organization

Clean/organize a room together. Purge, if possible. It’s good for the soul, good for your space, good to teach your children. 

Challenge 6: Scripture Memory

Spend some time as a family memorizing Scripture. Sit together each morning or evening and work on it. We’ve included a few passages as options, but feel free to choose your own. If you have younger children, memorize smaller portions. Olders? Memorize whole chunks. Each week, we’ll include Scripture memory as a family challenge. Try a new passage each week. And, feel to take an entire year to work on multiple portions of Scripture together. 

  • Isaiah 43:1-3

  • Psalm 23

  • Joshua 1:9

  • Joshua 24:15

  • Romans 8:31-39

  • Ephesians 3:16-21

  • Ephesians 2:1-10

  • Romans 3:21-26

  • Psalm 46

  • Psalm 121   

Challenge 7: Car Wash

Wash your car together. Have fun. Get wet. Let kids get “messy” in the soap, and run through the hose.

Challenge 8: Weather Forecast

Film a fake weather forecast. Dress your kids up like “weather”, have a parent be the forecaster, or vice versa. Have fun. Upload and share the video of your forecast with us for an extra entry into this week’s drawing. 

Challenge 9: Backyard Camping

Set up a tent in the backyard and enjoy a night (or afternoon) of camping!

Challenge 10: Photo Album

Create a family photo album of the Fun From Home Family Challenge!