Catholic Family Fun - A Guide for the Adventurous, Overwhelmed, Creative or Clueless [Paperback]

Sarah Reinhard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2012

Game night/day meets Catholicism in this inspirational guidebook offering activities with strategies and suggestions for fun family engagement with one another and with faith! A great resource for parents, grandparents, caretakers, and family friends, this book conceptualizes a wide range of fun, practical activities that strengthen faith formation in young to grade-school age children.

Divided into nine chapters-silly activities, storytelling, craft projects, meal sharing, outdoor adventures, places to go, saints to celebrate, ways to serve, ways to pray-there is a whole lot of fun to go around for everyone! Each activity contains a "Faith Angle," "Wider Angle," and a "Make it Yours" section to incorporate elements of the Catholic faith into your activities and life at large. Preparation time, duration, and cost are indexed, so you can find the ideas that correspond to your family's schedule and budget.

With these activities that can be adapted to suit your Catholic family, you'll be on your way to having some fun while building a "domestic church" of your very own!

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Pauline Books & Media (2012)
• ISBN-10: 0819816043
• ISBN-13: 978-0819816047
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,015,301 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sarah Reinhard is a Catholic wife, mother, and writer living in Ohio. She writes at SnoringScholar.com in the midst of rural farm life with little ones underfoot. A convert to Catholicism, she's still learning what to do and when to do it, and she struggles (like so many others) with keeping sight of her faith in the midst of everyday life.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great resource for parents, teachers, scout leaders -- anyone who works with kids. April 12, 2012

By Jennifer Fitz

Format:Paperback

You know how women's magazines have those little articles about fun things to do with your family? This is like 10 years of those ideas all in one place. Only you are spared those obnoxious photos of pristine toaster ovens and closets organized by that sect of hermits who take a vow to own nothing but three pieces of splashy, sassy, ready-for-spring ensembles to pair with their strappy heels. Also, no perfume ads.

Instead you get page after page of practical, realistic ideas for unplugged family activities that you can customize to match your kids' ages and interests. The chapters are organized by types of activities (crafts, meals, outdoor adventures, etc.), and there are several easy-to-read indexes in the back to help you quickly find the ones that match your budget and energy level. Most of the suggestions are either free, or involve money you were going to spend anyway. (You are going to eat today, right?)

Other than the chapters on prayer and on the saints, the activities themselves can be purely fun family time, or they can be explicitly tied to the Catholic faith. Every activity includes suggestions on how to make the faith connection.

What if you aren't crafty? Don't panic on the crafts, there aren't that many and they are very low-key. Indeed, I'd say this is the perfect book for people who don't do glitter glue, foam art, or anything involving popsicle sticks, ever. Did I mention Sarah R. is a real mom of young children, with a farm, and a writing job, and . . . you get the picture. You may find yourself wanting an internet connection to pull off a few of these activities (I see you have access to one, very good), but no glue gun will ever be needed.

What if you are, in fact, the grumpy, curmudgeonly type? See the next section.... I advise letting your kids pick the activities. That way you never need fear you've gotten all goofy and relaxed for nothing. Also you could tell the kids you aren't going to do Chapters 1 and 2 yourself, but you'll give them five bucks if they'll just be quiet while your finish reading the paper. (Um, wait a minute. No, that's not how the book's supposed to work. Oops.) Chapters 3-9 are Curmudgeon-Safe, though the one idea about a backyard circus makes me a little nervous . . .

Who could use this book? Three groups of people come to mind, and last was a surprise to me, but it's true:

1. Parents, grandparents, and other relatives.

-If you're trying to think up new ways to connect to the kids, and get out of the rut of doing the same old things.
-If you have a long summer vacation ahead, with stir-crazy children and no money for expensive camps and activities.
-Or if you didn't have a satisfyingly Catholic childhood, and you want to find ways to share and practice your faith without being all stodgy and dour about it.

2. Kids. My daughter is fighting me for custody of our copy. The book is eminently readable, so you really can hand it to a late-elementary or older child, and say, "Pick something out for us to do Saturday." I like that because then the onus is on the kids to decide which activity sounds fun -- and I'm always surprised by what kids come up with when given the choice.

3. Catechists, VBS volunteers, scout leaders, and anyone else charged with keeping a group of kids busy for an hour or two. Some of the activities will only work in a family setting, but very many of them are well-suited to using in a classroom. The suggestions for faith tie-ins make this an awesome resource for religious ed and VBS. If your parish doesn't have money for a high-priced pre-packaged program with talking pandas and cheesey chipmunk videos, you could seriously just go through this book and pick out activities to assemble a home-grown series of your own.

Sarah's put together a great book. Enjoy!

[For those who wonder: a)Yes, Pauline Media sent me a review copy. And b)Yes, I work with Sarah R. and we are friends as a result, so if she wrote a bad book, I just wouldn't review it. But let me observe that c)I've actually gone and bought a copy with my own hard-earned cash to give as a gift to my DRE. Trust me I don't spend dollars I don't have to, so if it were a so-so book, I would've just given my free copy to my DRE and been done with it.] Read more ›

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Cure for the Summer Doldrums July 19, 2012

By Julie D. VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Or for any time you've got time and bored children on your hands.

Catholic Family Fun is a guide families can use for having a great time together, often using supplies from around the house or just plain imagination. Sarah Reinhard has a variety of ingenious ways to have fun in an old fashioned way that doesn't seem "old fashioned." The headings alone point you in the right direction. Who can resist Silly Things to Do Together, Story Starters, or Outdoor Adventures?

Each activity has a several variations, starters to help you get going, faith angles, and a way to "make it yours." There must be over a hundred possibilities when you consider all the alternatives. Some of these are activities that we did with our children when they were little but many of the variations are new to me. I'd have loved this book as an idea generator for a way to grow closer to the kids.

In keeping with the faith theme, the sections Faith with Fun, Ways to Serve, Saints to Celebrate and Praying Together are all just as fun and ingenious as the rest of the book. Somehow I never thought of doing the housework together while singing the Divine Mercy chaplet but just thinking about the house ringing with that song is one that makes me smile.

Although it is Catholic Family Fun, you could easily give it to families who don't care about the Catholic angle. Fun is fun no matter what a family does or doesn't believe. In the faith areas, many of the service ideas, for example, work just as well for any faith orientation with a bit of creative tweaking.

Just reading this book cast my memory back to sleepovers our girls would have when the big event was a musical show. The kids planned, costumed, and scripted it using Disney soundtracks.... The next morning, all the parents got a show. Nothing we bought them could have given the fun and excitement they had from those evenings. This book is full of similar ways of "making" your own good times.

Full disclosure: when this review book showed up in the mail, I immediately began thinking of which young mother of my acquaintance would be the recipient. Certainly, I planned on reading a few sample chapters at best. Therefore, this book's best testimony is that a third of the way into it, I was wishing I'd had it when my children were small and planning to tuck it away thinking "grandchildren someday."

Families with small children or grandchildren need this book. Period. If I had the cash, I'd keep a supply on hand to distribute to my many friends with small children. This could not only save their sanity but give them the reputation as the most fun mom on the block. Read more ›

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Resource for Families May 21, 2012

By Ellen Gable Hrkach VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Amidst the busyness of family life with small children, some parents can miss the numerous opportunities to simply have fun with your kids. These are the memories your children will treasure.

One of my favorite things to do with my own children (even those who have reached adulthood) is to play games with them. I've always enjoyed a fun game of "Life," Scene It or video games. When they were younger, my sons loved to play pretend games based on movies (like Aladdin, the Wizard of Oz and Return to Oz) and of course, as the only "girl" in the family, I always got to play the girl parts (like Dorothy or Jasmine). As my sons have grown into young men, we still enjoy playing games together (Boggle is our latest favorite game).

Sarah Reinhard is no stranger to fun. Anyone who reads her columns, blog posts, Tweets or Facebook messages, know what a wonderful sense of humor she has and what a great writer she is. She has taken two of her strongest talents and made them into a book on how families can have more fun together, not only fun, but fun with a Catholic twist.

This terrific resource includes nine chapters ranging from a series of light-hearted activities to suggestions on how one can draw deeper into the Catholic faith. Each section lists the activity, the "faith" angle and a way to make the activity your own. It's filled not only with great ideas for family fun in general, but also some specific ideas. I especially enjoyed seeing each activity from a "Faith Angle" and that's what makes this book unique.

The Appendix is packed with a categorizing of the activities organized by prep time, activities organized by duration and by cost....

I highly recommend this wonderful resource for any family looking for ideas to make family time more fun and enjoyable.

Ellen Gable Hrkach
Author, Stealing Jenny Read more ›