We present an F-expansion method for finding periodic wave solutions of nonlinear evolution equations in mathematical physics, which can be thought of as a concentration of extended Jacobi elliptic function expansion method proposed recently. By using the F-expansion, without calculating Jacobi elliptic functions, we obtain simultaneously many periodic wave solutions expressed by various Jacobi elliptic functions for the variant Boussinesq equations. When the modulus m approaches 1 and 0, the hyperbolic function solutions (including the solitary wave solutions) and trigonometric solutions are also given respectively.