HOW TO DO A WEEKLY FAMILY MOVIE NIGHT

Wanna get more done in less time?! Grab your FREE Productivity Planner and learn how to plan your day so you can do #allthethings and still have time to be present with your family!

For those of you who might be new or don’t know me well, I am a true introvert at heart. While social media has definitely pushed me to be a little more extroverted, especially in front of the camera, I would definitely much rather keep to myself and stay in than be the center of attention.

And I think that’s why family movie nights have become one of my favorite weekly traditions in our house. We’ve been doing this for a few years now, but because of COVID-19 this year and the fact that we’ve literally only have had ONE NIGHT away from our children (and that was this past weekend), family movie nights have been a standing date on our calendar.

We typically do our family movie nights on Friday nights, but sometimes we have to shift them to Saturdays due to the husband’s coaching schedule, or, lately, we have them on both Friday + Saturday nights. And they have become my absolute FAVORITE night of the week.

If you’re more extroverted than I am, you might be thinking this feels impossible to do because it means staying home one night each weekend, but just because we do it once (or twice) a week, doesn’t mean you need to.

How to do family movie night with your family…

1. Schedule it into your week or month

Like I said, your family movie night does not have to be a weekly occurrence like ours is. We just REALLY enjoy that time together (and I think I’ve made my husband a little more introverted in our 19 years together). But, because I am ALL about having a plan, I think the one thing you absolutely need to do is plan it into your week or month.

I don’t start with family movie night, though. I start with our weekly activity schedule that I sit down and plan out every week. (You can check out how I plan out my week and grab my FREE productivity planner to help you plan out your week.) Obviously, if we have something on Friday or Saturday night, we need to plan our family movie night around that. Our default is always Friday night, but if the husband has a cross country meet, we move it to Saturday - or if we’re busy both nights, we skip the week, much to my displeasure.

But, I highly recommend that you put it on your schedule and treat it like an appointment with someone outside of your family that you don’t cancel on.

2. Find what makes your family movie night special

We don’t want our family movie nights to be like any other night during the week. Our normal nights look like dinner at the table together, cleaning up the house, baths or showers, and iPad time for the kids. For the kids to really care about these nights as a family, we wanted to make it special and not like any other night during the week.

On family movie night, the husband usually makes homemade pizza, the kids get to drink soda, and we have a picnic on the floor. After we finish eating, the dishes sit in the sink instead of being cleaned and put in the dishwasher right away, and we snuggle up on the couches together. The husband and I split a beer and the kids eat dessert.

It doesn’t look like our normal nights and that makes it feel like a special treat for all of us.

3. The #1 rule to family movie night…

NO TECHNOLOGY. Look, we are NOT perfect parents. Our kids get probably more screentime than they need or than is recommended, and there are nights when all 4 of us are on some sort of device.

But, on family movie nights, phones get put away. The kids don’t play on the iPads. It’s literally 2+ hours together of us as a family. Sometimes we interject our thoughts during the movie, and more times than not, I am telling at least one of the kids to stop talking because we’re trying to listen to the movie, but I think that just shows how excited they are about what we’re doing.

Even if we get a text or phone call, we miss it because this time together is sacred.

OK, now that you know how to do a family movie night, here are some of the BEST movies we’ve watched (and have watched several times after) during our family movie nights and recommend you add to your list too!

(Side note: our kids are 9 and almost 6, so we try to keep it to PG movies for the most part, but a few PG-13 movies will sneak in from time to time. Our kids are scared of “bad words” so we try to warn them ahead of time if there is something that they probably shouldn’t repeat in public. Some of those PG movies from the 80s + 90s are a little more lenient with their language than we are today…)

GENERAL MOVIES

• Big Hero 6

• The SpongerBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water

• The Odd Squad Movie

• Bumblebee (be warned, this is PG-13)

• Dora and the Lost City of Gold

• George of the Jungle

DISNEY CHANNEL ORIGINAL MOVIES

• All 3 Descendents movies

• Zombies + Zombies 2

• Teen Beach Movie 1 + 2

• Lemonade Mouth

• High School Musical (all 3 movies)

• Camp Rock 1 + 2

MOVIES WITH SEQUELS OR REMAKES

• Star Wars (we watched them in “Machete” order)

• The Parent Trap

• Paddington + Paddington 2 (although Paddington 2 is WAY better than the first one)

• Freaky Friday (all 3 of them)

• Jumanji (we have not seen Jumanji 2 yet, but it’s on the list)

HOLIDAYS

• Casper

• Noelle

• Christmas Chronicles

• Home Alone (all 3)

I hope this gets you inspired to start a family movie night of your own. It truly is my favorite night of the week and I look forward to it. I know someday my kids will be older and they might not want to do this as much as they do now, so I’m going to hold on to this for as long as I can!