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What the Fun?!: 427 Simple Ways to Have Fantastic Family Fun
" Where is the fun in your family's life? Have you sunk so deep in the day-to-day crunch of life, you've forgotten how to make things fun? What The Fun?! answers every parent's question, What can I do to make my family happy? Creating more fun in your days will make you a joy to be around and you'll be a great example to your children. They will learn how to find their own happiness. What more could you want for your kids? Donna Bozzo has shared her prescription for folding tons of fantastic fun into your days with millions of people on television and in magazines. Now she gives you 439 easy peasy ideas to help you to put more fun in your family's life any and every day. Try her. - Five-minute fun fixes - Zany ways to shake up the ole (yawn) daily routine - Clever bedtime, homework and chore time struggle stoppers - Quick ways to create family memories - Easy, exciting ways to make each and every day a special occasion. What The Fun?! will show you how to STOP BEING SO SERIOUS and find more fun in your family's life"--
- GenresParenting
224 pages, Paperback
First published May 17, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 4, 2016
We’ve all been there: we have one or more (sometimes many more) kids to look after or entertain for an afternoon and don’t want to be remembered as the “boring” one. But maybe we’ve used up all our ideas or can’t use a couple so are sort of desperate for some help. Donna Bozzo is a media personality with three daughters and lots of energy. She has come up with 427 Simple Ways to Have Fantastic Family Fun, and has written them down. That’s one step beyond what most of us do and is ve-e-e-ry helpful when we feel braindead after a busy week.
Looking through this book I could see many time-tried favorites, like mud pies and singing in the rain, but she came up with a few new good ones that seemed doable and something I wouldn’t have come up with on my own. One I thought had potential was Nighttime Driveway Bowling with glow sticks in water-filled plastic bottles and a glow-in-the-dark- painted ball. Not sure your husband would agree to have us paint his basketball, but a ball of that size and weight might work well. Donna suggests an old medicine ball. (WTF?!) That sounds so Californian, but no…she lives in Illinois.
One suggestion that doesn’t require painting anything is making a map on the walk to school. Seems like it could be a useful and fun, and maybe even a multi-day project, depending on the attention span, if the child is youngish.
The book has a few pictures which helps to get some idea of what she means when she describes making a robot, for instance, out of soup cans. But one photograph showed a woman in a beekeeper’s suit holding a hive frame covered with bees. The woman is smiling through her mask, and the activity suggests you bring your kids to see the bees work. Bozzo adds “trust me” and I guess we’d have to…though unless you can come up with some hazmat suits in a small size, I might put this one off until the kids are old enough to give consent.
When I read that you can have the kids report the weather like the folks on TV, using a green screen and some downloaded video footage, at first I thought, “oh come on!” But then I started to get kind of excited about the idea…mainly because I have a green cloth already that could be used for the screening. The cool thing is that everybody learns something with this multi-day project. The kids have to realize how they can speak about weather they can’t see—at least not in back of them. We’d have a little exercise in video-making, and once the kids realize how it all works, they can use real weather outside the window to report…somehow I can see a three-year-old saying dolefully “It’s raining” in front of footage of heavy rain in the yard, or a twelve-year-old pretty quickly learning to film her friends doing real reporting in front of their own footage. This multi-day project has some real potential for fun and learning for all.
So, when you are too frazzled to think much of anything, you might want to turn to a book like this to quickly pull something together for a party or something quieter for after school. You’ll see things you’ve done before, but you’ll also see how a busy, high-energy mother of three makes it work for her family. P.S. I notice there are only 427 suggested projects in the book now, though initially the title had 439 or more projects. Wonder if some of them weren't a little...like the bee hive visit.
Looking through this book I could see many time-tried favorites, like mud pies and singing in the rain, but she came up with a few new good ones that seemed doable and something I wouldn’t have come up with on my own. One I thought had potential was Nighttime Driveway Bowling with glow sticks in water-filled plastic bottles and a glow-in-the-dark- painted ball. Not sure your husband would agree to have us paint his basketball, but a ball of that size and weight might work well. Donna suggests an old medicine ball. (WTF?!) That sounds so Californian, but no…she lives in Illinois.
One suggestion that doesn’t require painting anything is making a map on the walk to school. Seems like it could be a useful and fun, and maybe even a multi-day project, depending on the attention span, if the child is youngish.
The book has a few pictures which helps to get some idea of what she means when she describes making a robot, for instance, out of soup cans. But one photograph showed a woman in a beekeeper’s suit holding a hive frame covered with bees. The woman is smiling through her mask, and the activity suggests you bring your kids to see the bees work. Bozzo adds “trust me” and I guess we’d have to…though unless you can come up with some hazmat suits in a small size, I might put this one off until the kids are old enough to give consent.
When I read that you can have the kids report the weather like the folks on TV, using a green screen and some downloaded video footage, at first I thought, “oh come on!” But then I started to get kind of excited about the idea…mainly because I have a green cloth already that could be used for the screening. The cool thing is that everybody learns something with this multi-day project. The kids have to realize how they can speak about weather they can’t see—at least not in back of them. We’d have a little exercise in video-making, and once the kids realize how it all works, they can use real weather outside the window to report…somehow I can see a three-year-old saying dolefully “It’s raining” in front of footage of heavy rain in the yard, or a twelve-year-old pretty quickly learning to film her friends doing real reporting in front of their own footage. This multi-day project has some real potential for fun and learning for all.
So, when you are too frazzled to think much of anything, you might want to turn to a book like this to quickly pull something together for a party or something quieter for after school. You’ll see things you’ve done before, but you’ll also see how a busy, high-energy mother of three makes it work for her family. P.S. I notice there are only 427 suggested projects in the book now, though initially the title had 439 or more projects. Wonder if some of them weren't a little...like the bee hive visit.
December 2, 2017
I just flipped through the book. I might have to pick it back up when I need a quick idea for family related activities.
July 24, 2016
Fun listing of ideas. Nice inspirational quotes. Nothing groundbreaking or earth shattering. However, if you're looking for new ideas or new spins on old ideas, this is the place to start.
May 24, 2020
This book might be helpful to adults who have never been around children and who are now living with some, but most of these ideas are pretty basic. Childless Aunt/uncle hosting nieces/nephews for the summer, new foster parents, camp counselors who have no child care experience. I skimmed through it with my 8 and 9 yo and they weren't impressed.
I can see it being helpful, though, if you are a new parent, or a parent of a toddler who hasn't been around any sort of toddler/preschool programs at the library, preschool, community center, etc.
I can see it being helpful, though, if you are a new parent, or a parent of a toddler who hasn't been around any sort of toddler/preschool programs at the library, preschool, community center, etc.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews