What to Do Around the Dinner Table

Eating together as a family is a priority in our house. For at least one meal a day, all of us come together to eat and visit and learn together. It’s a precious time where my kids will be around my table, and I want to cherish it! But I know sometimes we get distracted and tired and just irritated. So here are our ideas for what to do around the dinner table other than just eat, so that the whole family can have fun!

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If you hate meal planning and just want some ideas on “What in the hell am I feeding these people this week?!”, check out my real simple meal planning ideas.

Of course, just having conversation about your day or your hopes for tomorrow is totally fine. These are just a bit more creative as far as ideas for what to do around the dinner table. And make sure you add your ideas in the comments!

We love learning and teaching each other, and what better time than when we’re all seated and undistracted? Right now my kids are three and a half years old, and almost six years old, so one is reading and one is super close. We’re also super science nerds (especially life science and space), and my kids are both master story tellers.

Flash cards are a quick and fun way to hammer in some concepts, whether it be the ABCs, sight words, numbers, or visual topics like colors and shapes. Try to find some that are easy to wipe clean, or make your own with notecards! I also like to use sentence strips that I find at the dollar store and cut them down to size. My younger child is mastering letters and letter sounds, and my kindergartener has a set on those sentence strips that’s about 100 sight words. Bonus: Use the sight word cards to make silly sentences, and unscramble phrases!

If you’re working on teaching your young child their ABCs, here are all of my ideas.

Playing games with pieces can be a bit tricky when you’re deciding what to do around the dinner table, but sometimes it works beautifully! All of our favorite games are here – dominoes or the tren game, or a card game like Uno, are great choices, too!

Maybe you love teaching your kids but you don’t want to deal with “stuff” when trying to figure out what to do around the dinner table. And that’s ok! Have one person pick a topic or ask a question, and have a discussion. We have talked about various topics, from dinosaur extinction, to how your body changes in space, to the theory of “What does the tooth fairy do with all those kids’ teeth?!” It’s great to have your children’s minds working, and it works up an appetite, too!

Some ideas for big discussions:

• What happened to the dinosaurs
• How the Earth revolves and rotates
• The water cycle
• What do engineers do
• Who is the Tooth Fairy and what do they do?
• Ideas for random acts of kindness
• What you’re most looking forward to (next summer, next week, school year, etc.)
• What you admire/love most about each person around the dinner table and why
• A goal for yourself and why
• A service project or trip that you could do as a family

If you feel like being creative, tell a story together! We play “Popcorn” (which my kids also call “And Then”) which is where one person starts making up a story, and every so often they say “Popcorn (the next person’s name” to continue the story. (Alternatively we say “And then…” which is the cue that it’s the next person’s turn). My kids are addicted to this game and it’s a really fun way to be engaging. This is also our favorite when we’re at a restaurant and trying to think of what to do around the dinner table.

Lastly, I wanted to take a minute to remind you to ask about your children’s day (and to share your own experiences too, of course). I find that especially with younger kids, a whole day becomes really overwhelming if you just ask “How was your day?” And you’ll probably get that one-word response that all parents dread. So try to ask specific questions to get them to open up a bit more, and help them remember all the amazing things that happened. 

Some specific questions you can ask:

• What did you talk about at lunch?
• Which elective/special did you have today?
• What game did you play at recess?
• Who did you talk to the most today?
• Did anything funny or exciting happen?
• What is the next big goal you’re working on in x class?
• Is there anything that’s stressing you out or that you’re worried about?

I love hearing from readers and getting all of their marvelous ideas, so please share away in the comments! And as always, thank you for sharing and pinning! I hope that you enjoyed these ideas for what to do around the dinner table!