Family dinner games for the Parable of the Sower

The cover of the book: The Family Dinner

So what games have you been playing at the dinner table?

Playing games is what makes eating dinner together fun! (And memorable.) The book The Family Dinner has this to say about the goal of game playing at supper…

To lead everyone to great family stories and good conversations.

And if that conversation tends toward talking about issues of faith… all the better.

Here’s some games you can play that tie in with our current Rotation for the Cool Disciples at FUMC in Ann Arbor, MI.

  • What would you plant? Take turns telling what each family member would like to grow if you had a large garden.
  • Take it up a notch… assuming you could grow anything (such as colors of paint, or types of cars) what would each person like to try growing and why?
  • Play “Fortunately/Unfortunately” – one person starts off telling a story with a good or fortunate occurrence. Start off with: “Once upon a time, a farmer had good weather so he decided to plant some seeds.” The next person adds to the story with an unfortunate event, for example: “Unfortunately his bag for the seed had a hole in it.” The next person remedies the situation with another fortunate event, such as: “Fortunately, this farmer had a neighbor who had an extra bag.” Etc., etc. Back and forth with fortunate and unfortunate episodes.
  • Review the four different types of soil in the Parable of the Sower and note what happened to the seed on each soil. Go around the table and have everyone add one line to a modern-day story that conveys the same meaning. (How about a story about learning to ice skate?)

Have fun!

For more on making family dinners a priority, read here.


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Book cover – from my archives. (I took a picture of this book when I had it out of the library!)

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A Family Dinner “Game”

A way to talk about faith with your kids is to make family dinner a priority.

But don’t just eat. Play games.

That’s right. To extend your time together as a family, add a “game” to the end of your meal. Here’s a game suggestion that ties to our current Rotation on Daniel and the lions. Make the story come alive! Tell the story dramatically, involving everyone at the table. All you need is a Bible.

Find Daniel 6:3-23. (If you want an easy to read version click here.) One person can be the story teller and everyone else… the characters in the story. To make it easy, there doesn’t have to just be one Daniel and one king – everyone can be Daniel and everyone can be the king. And everyone gets to be lions!

Daniel In the Lions

The reader can create voices for the different story characters. How would the bad guys sound? Sort of whispery? (You do this when reading regular books to your kids; why not apply it to reading the Bible.)

For example, in verse 11 it says…
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Some of the other royal officials went to where Daniel was staying. They saw him praying and asking God for help.

Ask your family to pretend to be the bad guys. How would they act when they discovered they’d trapped Daniel! Encourage everyone to use their body to tell the story. (The bad guys were probably giving each other high-fives. Yes! We caught him in the act!)

Perhaps she is a lion?
How did Daniel look when he was praying? How did the king react when he heard what he’d done to Daniel? How did the lions look before Daniel was thrown into their den? How did they look when Daniel was among them? (Mouths closed!)

Finish up your “game” with a prayer. (It’s what Daniel probably did.)

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Photo credits:
Daniel with lions a photo of a painting by Robert Edward Weaver (c. 1952), is licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Kid being a lion by Nathan, who licensed this photo on Flickr under a Creative Commons CC BY 2.0 License.