If you are looking to have more interaction at the mealtable with your children you might have tried asking a few questions about their day and the answers probably varied from one word to perhaps three?
We’ve developed a whole series of conversation cards to get past this problem which you can find here. Doing the same thing gets old pretty quickly so we have an audio version to mix things up so don’t forget to check those out too.
I love to see interesting Facebook videos and I like to keep the link in an Evernote folder and we watch them at a meal time. This is especially a fun thing as we don’t have electronics at the table during meal times and now the iPad or smartphone is out and we’re all watching. It’s a great treat and gives us something to talk about.
Video are fun conversation starters for families.If you’ve not seen these I’d encourage you to watch it first yourself. They’re all short. Have a think of a question or two to ask afterwards. These are a few our favourite questions to ask.
- what does the video mean to you?
- If you were there what would you have done?
- What happened just before or just after the video? ( beware this one can go longgggg! 🙂
We tend to ask just one question as there are five of us so by the time we’ve gone around the table we’re done with questions. It keeps it light and fun. The conversation comes back to videos during the meal and at other times but we’ve found less is more.
Video conversation starters for families
Piano stairs
Type: Fun
background music:
talking:
Ads:
Possible things to mention: architecture and layout of another city, what would you play? would you take the stairs or escalator?
stuck on an escalator
Type: motivational
background music: midway through
talking: from the beginning
Ads: yes at the beginning
Possible things to mention: what they can do to take action? Why were they waiting? What does the video mean to you?
MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON, TWO
MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON, TWO from Dean Fleischer-Camp on Vimeo.
Type: thinking
background music:
talking: yes
Ads:no
Possible things to mention: different things in the background of the house. What’s on the computer screen? Injokes?
So now you have three videos as conversation starters for families. The great thing is you don’t have to agree or like what you see so everyone gets to have an opinion. As children get older they love this type of freedom of thought and they often love to tell you exactly why it was rubbish, silly, funny or sad in their opinion. It’s not forced and there’s no big message but there is opportunity to touch on issues that don’t usually just spring up at the meal table.
If you’re looking for some conversation for the other 4 days and more check out the April Character conversation cards which talk about on perseverance,responsibility and citizenship.
What videos would you recommend?
