Handout 18
Tea-time topics for families
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The following topics are suggestions for mums and dads and step-parents to have 'up their sleeves' when having meals or spending time with their children.
Make sure you have something to say to start the ball rolling. Look for opportunities to share your experiences, to inform, to teach and to encourage. Children will learn to listen, share, take turns and be curious along the way. Remember to actively listen to your children without preaching, criticising or putting them down. During these conversations everyone must feel free to say what they like without being offensive. It's okay to be silly, irrational or unrealistic.
General tips
- Favourite songs
- Clothes
- Favourite drinks
- Favourite meals, fruits, sweets, or take-aways
- Funniest movies
- Saddest movies
- Best special effects in movies
- Holidays you have had
- The first ride you'd go on at a theme park
- Best sand castles
- Dolphins and whales
- Savings and money
- Hobbies
- Things to collect
- Jobs and careers
- Enthusiasm
- Meanings of sayings, for example:'pleased as punch','with flying colours', etc.
- Riddles
- Jokes
- Discrimination
- Courage - what is it, where have you experienced it or noticed it?
- Sharing the load - chores and how to be grown up about them
- Fire-walking
- Parachuting
- Football (or some other sport)
- Hang-gliding
- Acting
- Saying 'sorry'
- Saying 'goodbye' - losing friends and pets.
- Keeping in touch with friends by letters and phone
- Teachers
- Doctors and dentists.What do you think is the hardest/best/yuckiest thing about their job?
- Aliens
- Time machines
- Computers
- The Australian bush
- Suggestions for the prime minister
- Labelling people
- What makes a best friend?
Creative topics
- If you could be an animal, what kind of animal would you be, and why?
- If the house was burning down, what three things would you like to save? (things, not people - we know you would save the people first!)
- What are your favourite names, what will you call your children?
- If you were lost on a desert island, what things would be most useful? (For example, matches, compass, rope, first aid, recipe book, teddy bear, doona, seeds, games, books,Tim Tams.)
- Mimicking famous people, for example, can you talk like Arnold Schwarzenegger?
- Poetry - create short instant rhymes. (For example,'Angela the tarantula')
- Celebrate something, a completion, a success, an anniversary, the dog's birthday.
Personal topics
- What have you been dreaming about lately? (Sleep dreams or daydreams)
- What is your best quality? What is your mum's, brother's, sister's best quality?
- What is the best news you have heard this week?
- If you could be the best at any sport, what would it be and why? What medals/awards would you like to win?
- What is embarrassment? When have you been embarrassed? How can you help someone to feel better when they are embarrassed?
- Are you ever taken for granted? What do you do that you would like to be thanked for?
- Are you good at anything that your teacher doesn't know about?
- Play a 'feelings' game. Remember a feeling, say when you felt this way. What colour was the feeling, how big was it, how strong was it (out of 10, or as strong as a big truck), what was it like in nature (a storm, a kitten, birds flying on a calm day, a mother cow nuzzling her calf)?
- Family history - and the stories that you have heard about your ancestors, for example, how did Grandma meet Grandpa, what countries did they come from?
- What do you really believe in - what is worth fighting for?
- Looking after your body - nutrition, smoking, exercise, junk food, sport, sleep.
General topics
- What place in Australia would you most like to visit?
- What place in the world would you most like to explore?
- What is the most exciting thing you can think of that you would like to try? For example, caving, surfing, bungy-jumping, parachuting. What would this feel like? How old would you have to be? How scary would it be?
- Talk about a famous person. For example, who are Nelson Mandella, Helen Keller, Anne Frank?
- Plan an imaginary party. Who will you invite, what theme will you have, what would you eat, how will you decorate, what would you wear?
- Plan an outing or a holiday.
- Weather. Don't laugh! - Talk about hailstorms, what is the hottest month (February), the wettest (October), tidal waves, monsoons, willy-willies and tornadoes.
- What would you like to do for others? What would you like to invent that would make the world a better place?
Source: O'Brien, Carmel, Unpublished material, LifeWorks.