Did you know that as busy as life gets, family downtime is something that we need to make time for?
Contrary to what others might presume of us who work from home, downtime does not happen at will – as much as we’d love for it to. Family downtime happens when we get it scheduled, and are intentional about it. The truth of the matter is, there’s always something we can otherwise do to add to our productivity score. Yes, such exists for this homeschooling family. Especially with our homeschooler who’ve been trained to study on his own, and has learned the discipline of goal setting from when he was 6 (Level 1).
Because we have also chosen the no-helper road, you can just imagine the never ending tasks I have to conquer on a daily basis as soon as my shift is over, never-lets up-always-adds-up grind. That’s not a complaint though. As I mentioned in previous posts, we love our privacy so much that we don’t mind paying the cost. We’ve been at this since forever, and we won’t have it any other way.
Downtime, Our Time!
As nice as being productive sounds, downtime is just as important. And because it’s more challenging for us, with my work from home job and homeschooling, intentionality is a must. We are eternally grateful that we were led to this unschooling zone, which has totally brought us to embrace the value of time as we get to daily dodge the horrendous metro traffic.
Family movie time! We love that we don’t have traffic to stress over, less carbon footprint. We just plop ourselves either in the family room or the bed, get the Fox Movies set up with the speaker on high, and we’re good to go.
Unless we have a scheduled hotel or out of town getaway, what mostly works for us is movie time at home. Here is our wee attempt to share pointers on making family downtime a success.
Be intentional.
We cannot overemphasize intentionality. We have said this before and we’ll say it again, and no, we are not about to apologize for mentioning it several times over . Calendar that family downtime movie date!
We strongly believe that we should involve ourselves in our children’s lives, and this includes the media, which is practically everywhere they turn. Our children’s choice of entertainment, movies for this matter – how much are we of an influence to them in their movie choices?
Movie time sets up an opportunity to discuss their thoughts about the story, and connect. Family bonding cannot be more fun and purposeful at the same time. There’s nothing sweeter than to be able to dig deep into our child’s innermost thoughts and emotions as we exchange opinions.
And because our family loves bonding over movies, we have recently subscribed to FOX Movies! We availed of the 30 day free trial offer. FOX Movies (previously Star Movies) carry the biggest movies that we can enjoy at the comfort of our home! FOX Movies is on the same channel number.
Because our homeschooling tween is crazy over Star Wars, the first movie we watched on our FOX Movies free subscription is Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. I don’t think our little man will ever tire of Star Wars. He’s gone over the book series several times over and I don’t think he’s had enough just yet.
We rarely indulge in movies on weekdays. But there are special days when Jed dashes through his PACES and goes beyond his goal for the day. Reward time it is! He loves the Space Warriors on FOX Family Movies, and that’s what he watched last night when he finished 60 pages – 2o pages over his regular daily goal.
Another reason to love about FOX Movies is that we have an option to watch Live TV straight from the mobile app. How totally cool is that!
FOX Movies App
Download and tune in to FOX Movies via the app on your device, and start your 30-day trial, like we did. 🙂
For iOS: https://goo.gl/WDCO5i
Android: https://goo.gl/u5xSqp
And calendar our downtime, we did! Our son and I voted to watch Snoopy and Charlie Brown: The Peanuts Movie this weekend. On our next family downtime, it’s the hubby’s turn to choose. 🙂
FOX Movies Program Schedule
Feel free to bookmark away the upcoming shows of FOX Movies. I know, I have! 🙂
As much as adults get to have time off work, kids also need to know how it is to chill and reset. In this age of overscheduled children, kids need to be kids. I know this for a fact, since my son’s academic goals will sometimes have him finish his PACES late through the day. Downtime makes a whole lot of difference as this allows for them to recharge and face yet another full schedule. Truth be told, family downtime gets each of us off the crazy zone.
For updates on what’s new, follow FOX Movies on Facebook and Instagram.
