How to Make a Fun Family Movie Night

If you want to see your child’s face light up, one of the simplest ways to excite them is by announcing a surprise family movie night.

Spending time with siblings and parents while watching a super exciting family-friendly movie is a dream night for most children. Pick out a fun movie you know your kids love or treat them to a new movie they’ve never seen before.

Either way, they’ll be ecstatic about the opportunity—bonus points if you let them stay up a little late to finish it. Check out this guide on how to make a fun family movie night for your kids.

Make your living room feel like a movie theater

One of the coolest things about family movie night as a kid is watching the living room transform from a place to play to a fun and cozy movie theater.

Turn down the lights and light some candles to create the light glow you find in movie theaters; just make sure to light them properly and keep them out of younger kids’ reach. Then, set up with lots of blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals to fill your theater with other “movie-goers.”

Setting the ambiance is half the fun of the at-home movie night experience, so let your kids help with the transformation. Have younger kids pick out and set up the stuffed animals and older kids lay out blankets and pillows for cozy floor seating.

RELATED: Movie Night Checklist

Get fun movie-themed snacks

If you’re feeling ambitious, you can match your movie snacks to the movie you’re watching. If there is a snack mentioned often in your movie, try to recreate it yourself before starting the movie night.

You can also get similar snacks to what the movie is about. For example, if you’re watching Finding Nemo, you could eat fish gummies and saltwater taffy, or if you’re watching Frozen, you can provide snow cones and carrots!

To continue this unit study, check out the Finding Nemo Movie Study.

On-theme snacks can help your kids get fully immersed in their movie experience.

Play dress-up

If you have younger kids, they most likely love to play dress-up and try to look just like their favorite characters. Encourage this kind of creativity and imagination usage by having everyone in the family dress up as a different character—parents included.

This way, the kids will be occupied getting dressed while you set the movie up and they’ll be so excited every time the character they’re dressed like appears on-screen.

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Mallory Knee