After a busy day out and about, once home we love to cosy up and enjoy a family night in. We love to watch new movies and Dave is an avid DVD collector. Recently though, we’ve started watching films in a variety of different ways.
The kids have always taken advantage of our movie accounts such as Google Play and watched movies on their tablet as a treat for “quiet time”. This is especially useful for Danny when he tires due to his heart condition. He doesn’t like to be told to rest (even when he needs it), but if we suggest a film then he will willingly agree.
We realised we were missing out and decided it would be fun to watch these movies as a family too. We were sent a lovely Asus Memo Pad 3 (I love the bright colours available- we chose yellow!) and a Google Chromecast which enables us to cast our favourite entertainment and apps onto our TV. All the favourite channels are supported including BBC iPlayer, Netflix and and Youtube.
The kids and I love this Asus Tablet. We use it on wifi. It can be used for playing games, reading books, watching Youtube as well as watching TV Shows and films on Netflix etc. It also has a camera, making it the perfect reasonably priced family tablet for us. Like most tablets, it is intrinsic to use and we all got the hang of it straight away. It has 9 hours of battery life, so it would be a great tablet to take with you while travelling too.
You can also mirror any screen on the tablet in case you are doing family shopping, looking at holiday photos or playing Pacman on Google Maps (how cool was that?).
It is so easy to use. Plug the Chromecast into your HDTV, connect it to your Wifi and enjoy! A Chromecast is only £30 too so it’s affordable to buy for other TVs in ths house too (we only have one). We allow the kids to search through all of favourite films on the tablet and add them to a watch list, so when we choose a family film to watch we already have a selection of favourites to choose from.
For our family night in, we had popcorn and watched Disney’s Mars Needs Moms. This is such a lovely heartwarming family film based on the book by Berkeley Breathed. It shows the realistic relationship between a mother and a son who love each other lots, but this gets overlooked in their everyday busy lives. Throughout the film, Milo finds out just how much he needs his mum and how everyone needs someone to love. He eventually finds his way back to his mom in more ways than one. It is also a wild, exciting adventure that kept our kids gripped, with lots of funny parts. They also loved the glimpse of how it was made at the end. It is made by the team that made The Polar Express- I love that style of realistic animation. We all had a boogie as a Crazy Little Thing Called Love by Queen was played at the end too (you’ve gotta love a bit of Queen).
It is great having so many films old and new available to immediately access now. I love watching all the classics with the kids. I did try and convince Dave that we could sell our DVD collection now to make space but he’s not quite ready for that yet…
How do you watch family movies? What’s your favourite family movie to watch together?
We were sent this tablet and Chromecast. All opinions are honest and our own.
