Our theme this month is Love! Check out some idea below from Soulful Home to explore the theme with your friends and family.
Discussion Questions
- What is your very first memory of feeling loved?
- Whose love for you do you never question for a moment?
- What does your family most love to do together?
- What’s something loving you say to yourself regularly? (For example, “I can do this,” or “I made a mistake, but it’s ok.”)
- Think of three people you love; what do they all have in common?
- How do our pets show love to us? How do we show love to them? What about the wild animals we share space with, like maybe songbirds, insects, squirrels, chipmunks, snakes, mice, etc.?
- When’s the last time you said, “I love you,” to someone?
- Do you think love existed before people put a name to it, or was love created only once people experienced it and described it?
- Can we actually decide whether or not we love another person?
- Can you love a part of the earth, maybe the landscape of your home region, or a place that is very special to you? Can the earth love you back?
- Many people talk about God’s love, or the nature of the Universe being love. Do you experience a sense of love that is bigger than any of us, and all-encompassing like that?
- What does the saying, “love your neighbor,” mean to you?
- How does it feel to fall in love, or how do you think it feels?
- Do you believe in love at first sight?
- How does your family most often show love? How is this alike and different from other families you know?
Return to the Discussion Throughout the Week
Thoughts develop with time. Find opportunities to bring up particularly compelling questions again during the month, maybe on walks, rides home, when tucking your child into bed, etc. If thoughts grew or changed, notice together how we are all evolving beings, opening ourselves to new truths and understandings as we live our lives and connect with others.
Playing Games with Love
At Play activities and questions are a way to joyfully, playfully, and imaginatively experience the theme.
Option A: Silly Love Fortune Tellers
Folded paper fortune tellers have been popular with school-age children for decades. Refresh your memory on how to fold them here:
How To Make a Paper Fortune Teller – EASY Origami
Then, using the letters I L-O-V-E Y-O-U, write out eight silly actions, or eight fun predictions, so that your fortune teller engages every new person who walks in the room. Here are a few of our examples:
I – Itch your elbow with your toes
L – Lower your nose to your knee
O – Open your mouth as wide as you can, and say “I Love You”
V – Ventriloquize a sock puppet saying, “I Love You, (your name)”
E – Embrace someone or something in the room with you
Y – Yodel your whole address
O – Offer a compliment
U – Use something in the room as a silly hat for five minutes
Option B: Love Mazes
Print out a copy for each family member and have a race to see who finishes theirs first!
A maze that looks like a heart brain!
A challenge to get from one heart to the other
A Sip of Something New:
Love Languages, Rethought
In the early 1990s, Christian author Gary Chapman repackaged some common couples therapy concepts into a numbered list that he called “the five love languages.” The book was aimed at heterosexual Christian married couples, but it became popular beyond that intended audience. In the years since, love languages have become part of mainstream culture, and forward-thinking writers have revised and expanded the list of five to be more dynamic and inclusive.
Here’s Chapman’s list of five love languages:
And here’s a wonderful addition from the neurodivergent community:
And a new list of 18:
https://mammajism.com/18-languages-for-modern-love/
Reflect on these ways that people might show respect, caring, affection, and love to one another. Share with your conversation partner which languages seem most resonant to you, and to which ones you feel resistance.
In the love languages paradigm, each of us has one or two or a few preferred ways to give and receive love, and knowing one’s own preferences, as well as those of one’s loved ones, might create more harmony and deeper connection in relationships. It also gives up options of the many ways to love and be loved in the world!