Each year, Family Fun Month is celebrated throughout the month of August. It is the opportune time to enjoy family with extra fun and activities. It is the perfect reason to take that long-awaited family vacation together or to simply put away all the devices and have some good ‘ol fashioned quality time with each other. With the month of August serving as the golden hour of summer, expect to make the most of it by surrounding yourself with your loved ones and enjoying their company. After all, no one has your back more than family does, so it’s best not to take for granted the wonderful messiness of family relationships.

Family Fun Month is there to remind you to take a break, so we bring you some ideas for how you can fully utilize the last month of summer. So, before the chaos of school, work, and extracurriculars threatens to engulf you and your family, make the most of this month by finding ways to create special memories together.

HOW TO OBSERVE: Make some time this month for family fun. 

You may want to:



• Order pizza and watch a movie in the backyard
• Go camping
• Take a vacation
• Go out for ice cream
• Enjoy a backyard campfire
• Build a backyard fort
• Family bike ride
• Day trip to the zoo
• Fishing
• Hiking
• Day at the park
• Make a talent show
• Cook meals together
• Have a karaoke night

Use your imagination, spend time together and have fun!! Post on social media using #FamilyFunMonth to encourage others to join in.

HISTORY:

The origins of how Family Fun Month began are unknown. However, we’re glad that someone thought family fun was an important enough concept to celebrate it over an entire month. Furthermore, this month presents the perfect opportunity to acknowledge the diversity that exists within the single term “family”. Traditionally the concept of family was defined as “the co-residence and the organization by kinship “or a “co-residential group that makes up a household and may share general survival goals and a residence.” We have come a long way from such a framework or definition, and that in itself is something to celebrate. Today there are all sorts of families, from single-parent households to blended families, to adopted families. The idea of blood being thicker is fast becoming redundant and archaic, as more value is placed on the actual caregiving relationships which bond people together.

Historically, the study the family history became a separate branch of history only by the 1960s, and it’s something that is separate from genealogy. People are keen to trace their ancestry as far back as possible, as it’s always exciting to know how far back one’s ancestry goes and to discover the socio-cultural contexts one’s ancestors excited in. if we were to go to the ancient route, there are many origin stories of the first family-from biblical story of Adam and Eve to Hesiod’s “Theogony”, which tells of the Greek gods and their complicated family relationships (written in 800 B.C.).

However you decide to trace the history of families, theirs’ no denying that families have excised since the beginning of the human race, therefore no man is an island, and we all can choose to invest time month with someone who we consider to be family.