Slow Saturdays: 10 of our favorite family activities

When you have a day with not much planned, it’s hard to keep little kids busy. They’re not able to stay home while you run errands and their ability to entertain themselves is limited. You can’t even tell them to, “Go outside and play.”

That means Saturdays can be one of the toughest days of the week; at least, that’s the toughest day in the Magdalein household. We’ve learned to plan our Saturdays a day or two in advance so we’re not pulling our hair out by 9am. These are a few of the things we like to do to fill our Saturdays when the schedule is otherwise empty.

1. Go for a walk: 30–40 minutes. This is one of our favorite things to do as a family. We don’t have a big neighborhood, but we can usually stretch out a full mile walk without hitting major roads.
2. Play outside: 1 hour. We’re blessed with a big, private backyard, which means the boys can explore a little on their own.
3. Have a dance party: 20 minutes. We like to dance together. It gets the boys moving and it’s something we can do that shows them it’s okay to dance and have silly fun.
4. Go for a boat/canoe ride: 1 hour. We’ve got a tiny little boat and a little canoe that we’re able to launch from our backyard at high tide. The boys love to explore the marshes and go under the nearby bridges.
5. Watch some TV: 1 hour. Yes, we let our kids watch a little TV during the day. They’re limited to an hour a day and we pick the shows. I don’t care what anyone says, having the option to turn on the TV is a blessing for parents.
6. Inside free time: 1 hour. Our boys can play on their own for about an hour at a time, sometimes a little more. This means the toy box opens and plastic things fly everywhere, but they have fun and pick up after themselves.
7. Walk around the mall: 1 hour. We like to walk around the mall when the weather is nice. They have a little playground the boys love to crawl all over.
8. Snack time: 30 minutes. Snack time happens twice a day and chills the boys out while they munch on something yummy. It also helps keep them from getting too cranky.
9. Go to a family’s or friend’s house: 1 hour. We’re lucky to have family and friends living pretty close. Our boys love to go to other people’s houses and play with new toys.
10. Read some books: 30 minutes. Between all the kid books we get for holidays and the e-books on our phones, we’re never at a loss for something to read with the kids.

Notice that each of these activities fills an hour or less. It’s tough, even with an arsenal of ideas, to keep two toddlers focused on one thing for more than an hour. That’s why we like to keep a full list of options available to us for slow days like most Saturdays.

Of course, bad weather forces us to adjust expectations for what our day will look like, but that’s a blog post for another day. What about you? What do you do on slow weekends with your kids?