Family Night Flights

As a parent, I strive to engender excitement for learning in my child. I also want to create memories my sons will cherish as they grow and start their own families. I would like to think my sons will enjoy spending time with their mom and dad well into their teen years. Remembering my sixteen year old self, I can’t pretend to believe they will choose us on a Friday night over their friends. But I think the chances for having a real connection are greater if we start spending time together while they are young.

To that end, we have created a ritual in our family called family night. Family night is reserved for a special dinner of pizza (thank you, Papa Murphy’s) and an activity of choice for our children. It can involve anything from Candy Land to watching the Tivo’d Discovery Channel special on Ants. (Our children love it for some reason.) But my oldest son’s favorite family night activity is traveling around the globe.

We don’t physically travel anywhere, but to the imagination of a 5 year old, it is just as fun. And it’s much cheaper than a family vacation. When we ‘travel’, we let our son pick a spot on the globe. All week long, we talk about how exciting it will be to ‘travel’ to the special location. We build up the excitement in our children over breakfast and when we drop them off at school. And when it’s over, they talk about it for weeks, telling strangers at Wal-Mart how we traveled to Italy or France just last weekend.

Our travels our almost like a play. We each take turns playing the role of flight attendant, pilot and passenger, even to the point of the attendant passing out drinks and giving the air bag and exit door speech. The pilot points out to everyone when we are traveling over the ocean and how soon we land. (We usually fly while we eat our pizza around the dinner table). We even have tickets printed for our journey. And when we arrive, the magic of the internet takes over.

First, with Google Earth we show our children exactly how far it is from our home to our destination. My son really digs the ‘big blue ball’ as he calls it. Next, thanks to a little research ahead of time, we learn key phrases in the national language. (When traveling to another English-speaking country, it is always fun to point out differences. For instance, we use the bathroom while Canadians use the washroom). I almost always find printouts of the national flag and a map of the country and print them out for the children to color. I’ll even create a little PowerPoint of each country or city’s fun facts, pictures of famous landmarks and other interesting tidbits I come across as I look for things to do. And, if I can find something, we watch a cartoon or movie about the area. For instance, when we traveled to Africa, we watched the Lion King to reinforce the natural beauty of the country and its different animal inhabitants.

Not only do the children love our adventures, they learn about other cultures and enjoy their parents attention. For about an hours worth of preparation, we have a great time. And once you’ve created the first trip, you have an easy format to copy for other destinations.
Tomorrow I will examples of some of the PowerPoints and ticket stubs I created. Feel free to borrow them for your own family night. If you have any creative ideas for family night, please post them!