Keeping the Magic: Movie Night

Are you tired of watching Frozen over and over again? For us it was Mary Poppins and Cinderella. After our son was born we realized the trend of our regular Saturday movie night was predominantly skewed for a young female audience. I could foresee the fights that would happen a couple years down the road. The enjoyable movie night would be overtaken by the battle for who gets to pick the movie. One child wins and has a great night, the other does not and is sour the rest of the evening. So we nipped it in the bud and started watching Disney movies in chronological order starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It takes the choice out of everyone’s hands. It gets the kids familiar with all of the classical characters they’ll come across at the Parks. It creates an excitement for what movie is next. We’ll be listening to music from Little Mermaid and my daughter will ask, “When are we going to watch Ariel?” We pull up Wikipedia and see what movie we just watched and find out how far away we are from Ariel. This has also created new favourite movies for them. Our son LOVED Robin Hood. He talked about it all week long. And now he points him out whenever he sees the character on the cover of a book or in a colouring book.

This is how things went for a number of years for our family. Now with Disney + we have all the films at our finger tips, including an amazing selection of classic live action films. With social distancing regulations in place we’ve created a new routine for movies, we’ve been having an afternoon matinee on Friday afternoons. During this matinee, I select a movie. I’ve been picking older films including The Love Bug and Swiss Family Robinson. We also have our movie night on Saturday night. But instead of watching movies in chronological order, we’re going through the sequels. We’re rotation who gets to choose the Saturday movie choice between the kids and my hubby.

Now I understand this is all a lot more work then throwing in an all time favourite. Let me just tell you that it’s allowed me to enjoy watching movies with my kids. Watching the same thing over and over does not appeal to me. They can tell if you’re sitting there watching with them or sitting next to them and doing something on your phone. This can create more quality time with your kids. So make Movie Night apart of your weekend. Follow me on Instagram to see what we’re watching this week.