Three Great Ways to Unplug with Your Family!

It’s a common scene at our house.  Now that my ten-year-old son has his own laptop, we are all in our office settled behind our computers.  Each of use has our nose buried in our computer, yet, because we are all in the same room, we at least have some communication.  We are definitely one well connected family!

How We Unplug

A couple of months ago, Killerspin, the luxury ping pong table maker, challenged our family to #UnPlugNPlay with them.  They wanted to encourage our family to unplug, have fun,  and connect as a family other than playing XBox and the Wii U together.  

Ping pong has always been a favorite childhood sport of my husband and mine, so we took them up on their unplug challenge.  See how easy it was to set up the Killerspin table and begin playing in our article, Our New Adventure at Home.

With our busy schedule of Odyssey of the Mind meetings, Volleyball practices and games, basketball practices and games, church group, and board meetings, getting together as a family to play and unplug usually takes some scheduling.  But with a ping pong table in the house, impromptu play is a regular occurrence.

Here’s our family’s top list of ways we unplug together….

Dinner

As often as we can, we make having dinner together a priority.  We eat dinner together around our family dinner table at least 4 nights a week.  We have a Playbulb candle for ambiance in the middle of the table which we “blow” out after dinner each night.  To connect with each other, we always ask each other’s high and low for the day.  These questions always yield an interesting conversation.

When time affords, we pull out the game Spot-It, a card-type game where you need to be the first one to spot an object on your card on the card at the top of the deck.  It’s a fun, fast-paced game the really gets family members excitable.  

Ping Pong!

We don’t really have a great place for our Killerspin ping pong table.  It is an indoor/outdoor table, so we could place it outside.  But it’s a beautiful table and I’m afraid if we take it outside, we’ll forget to play it.  

So right now, our Killerpsin ping pong table sits between our kitchen and our family room or in front of our family room TV. There’s no missing it!  A quick challenge after school, after dinner, or before bedtime, the table is always ready!

We have had an absolute blast playing ping pong.  I love that our kids are loving the game as much as we did growing up.  Ping pong is great for hand-eye coordination in ensuring your hits get the ping pong ball on the table.  My ten-year old son loves hitting the ball hard each time.  It loses him points, but he likes making his opponents have to hunt after the ball!

My daughter and I created a new game we call Airball.  The object is to keep the ball in the air – it can’t hit the table or floor.  We love the “pop” sound the ball makes when it hits our paddles and seeing how many times we can volley the ball back and forth.

We laugh so much as a family playing ping pong.  It is a great stress reliever and the fact that you have to walk to pick up the ball after you miss it gives us a little exercise too!  If you can find room for a ping pong table in your house, I highly recommend it.

Nerf Gun Wars

We don’t get to play Nerf Gun Wars as often, but when we do, it REALLY gets our adrenaline pumping!  Both my son and my 13-year-old daughter have Nerf guns, though my son’s collection probably triples my daughter’s!  

We literally have hundreds of darts too.  Our favorite Nerf Guns are the tech ones which have automatic loading and fire out one dart after another in rapid succession!

How We Play

To play Nerf Gun Wars at our house, we split into teams, usually the girls versus the boys.  One team gets the upstairs the other team gets the downstairs.  We have the kids choose a number between 1 and 100 to see who gets the preferred spot…upstairs.

Our object is to capture the flag (or large umbrella in our case) from the other team.  Once you get shot three times, you’re put into prison in the opposing team’s territory.  To get out, your teammate needs to somehow get to the prison and tag you without getting shot three times him/herself.  

The game is over once a team has found the opposing team’s “flag.”  I should add that we play night with all the lights out for added fun.  We carry flashlights to help us pick up used darts or find the opponents or their flag.  Flags are not allowed to be hidden in drawers, cupboards, or closets and must be somewhat visible.  In the dark, it’s still hard to find them.

It is amazing how your adrenaline pumps during this game.  We don’t necessarily recommend playing this game right before bedtime!  But we do recommend setting a time limit – when time affords, we will play three 10-15 minute games, and we stop when the timer on our oven beeps.

Now of course, we also do some other fun family things around the house together, but they are not quite “unplugged.”  Watching movies and playing video games together is not quite unplugging from digital media.  

But honestly, the kids like to unplug and prefer ping pong and Nerf Gun Wars over digital gaming and TV anyways.  And our near-nightly family dinners are so important in bonding as a family and helping our kids feel valued and heard.

Killerspin Promotion

If you want to unplug and play some ping pong, Killerspin is offering a fun deal on their ping pong tables during the month of April.  Buy any one of their Revolution, Revolution SVR, Revolution SVR-B, MyT Wild Outdoor + In, MyT10 ClubPro Black, MyT Outdoor, MyT Outdoor Street, MyT7 ClubPro Black & MyT7 ClubPro Blue tables and get two free Jet500 Paddles & six free 4-Star Balls for free.  We have the Jet500 paddles and they are the nicest ping pong paddles we’ve ever used.  Just use the coupon code TAX2016 during checkout to get your bonus.

Tell us, what unplugged family fun adventures does your family enjoy doing together around home?