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How to Host a Parent’s Night Out: Valentine’s Day Edition

Parent's Night Out: Valentine's Day Edition

We decided to host our first Parent’s Night Out on Valentine’s Day this year. I am generally not a big fan of doing events that are basically childcare oriented, but I had a few solid reasons for putting on this event.

  1. It would be a ministry to the parents by offering them dirt cheap childcare.
  2. We had a theme day, called Love Bash, scheduled for the next morning where ministry would occur, so Parent’s Night Out provided a great opportunity to advertise and invite kids back the next morning.
  3. We already had a Valentine’s Day set up for Love Bash.

Honestly, I didn’t realize I was going to get so much great feedback and so many thank you’s from the parents, even before we put on the actual event. I guess four hours of entertainment and food for their kids (four hours of kid-free time for parents), all for $5, was a pretty good deal. Regardless of the fact this was basically a childcare event, I still wanted it to be awesome. So, if you are interested in the details of what exactly we did with a room of 40-50 crazy kids for four hours read on.

Valentine’s Day Night Out Schedule

5-5:30 – Free Time

We started the night off with some free time for the kids. If you have worked with children for any length of time, you know that you won’t really have your whole group of kids there until at least 30 minutes into the event. We set up a craft activity station (coloring sheets, DIY Valentine’s day cards, bookmarks, bracelets, random craft items), a game station (board games, bop-its, twister, Play Doh), and a video game hang-out area. We were fortunate enough to have beautiful weather here in Texas that day, so we also allowed the kids to go outside for some sports/games with a couple of our male leaders during this time.