For many families, sitting down to eat a meal together can be a real effort. When juggling work commitments, commutes home, after-school activities and household chores, it can feel too difficult a task to achieve or enjoy. With a few simple changes in routine however, dinner can become a time of day that everyone looks forward to.
Involve the Kids
Dinner time has to be something which everyone contributes to, regardless of age. This gives a sense of ownership, and spreads the tasks out fairly. Consider asking your children to select some supper music, lay the table, fold napkins or butter the bread. Give them age-appropriate duties for each evening meal, and you'll quickly notice a change. With younger children a personalised placemat or their very own personalised cutlery can make involvement that much more interesting. They will be able to make decisions about where each family member will sit and will offer a sense of autonomy and responsibility.
Make it Crafty
Dinner time is the perfect opportunity to exercise our creative muscles, even if it's just once a week. Try creating napkin rings from cardboard rolls, lay out colouring pads as placemats with crayons as a centrepiece, pick some flowers from the garden, or tie coloured ribbon to the backs of chairs. Use your imagination to personalise the dining space, and dinner will feel all the more intimate an occasion for it.
Sample New Flavours
Keep things fresh and use dinner as a chance for the whole family to explore new tastes and textures. It doesn't need to be an entire meal: you could simply pick up a new fruit variety, a spice you've never tried, or a small selection of cheeses. Involve everyone in researching and sampling the new taste, and compare your experiences.
Learn About Food
Keep things interesting by asking lots of questions about the food on everyone's plates. Discuss where it came from, how it was prepared, how it might be used in other ways, and the nutritional information you've gleaned. Developing food awareness is a key skill and it's also a great conversation topic that everyone can learn from.
Just For Laughs
Have a joke night where everyone has to bring a favourite story or one-liner to the table. You'll be surprised at how hilarious even the silliest jokes becomes, and the family will be cracking up in no time.
Themed Evenings
Choose a theme such as a film you've recently watched, a country, or a colour and create a whole evening around it. For example, you might choose 'green' and select a variety of matching food and dinner outfits, or have a movie night where hamburgers and milkshakes are followed by a Dirty Dancing screening -there are endless options.
With a bit of thought and preparation, dinner can become a highly anticipated point of the day for everyone, where they can relax, enjoy themselves, and even learn something new. A little imagination, interesting discussion and a joke thrown in for good measure will make your dinner time something everyone wants to attend.
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