10 Ideas How to Spend a Memorable Time With Your Child
Organize a nice day at home without smartphones
1. Treasure hunt
Searching for treasure was one of my favorite activities in my childhood. Create a treasure hunt to spend quality time with your kids, develop their curiosity, or even practice their reading skills when they’re still young.
An easy way to organize it is to hide sweets somewhere in the house or ice cream in the freezer, and then write 7–8 notes as clues. You can start with something easy: “Look under the sofa”, “Find the next note in the washing machine”.
With each clue, the instructions can become gradually harder. You can include rebuses, small poems, drawings, and riddles. To make it harder, here’re a few tricks and ideas:
- Wrong spaces: “Lo oku nde rthes ofa” instead of “Look under the sofa”.
- Mirror writing: writing phrases on a piece of paper that can be properly read when put against the mirror
- Anagrams: “Htin ni a parm” (“Hint in a pram”).
- Replacing letters: i=u, a=o, h=d, etc. For instance, “washing machine” can become “wosdung mocdune”.
The difficulty level may vary depending on your kids’ age and personal creativity.
2. Cooking together
Cook something special together as a family. Teach your kids how to bake cookies, make pasta Bolognese, a pancake cake, or a nice delicious sandwich. It’s not just a fun family activity, but also a good life skill to learn, and you have a tasty meal at the end.
Helping parents in the kitchen teaches children to be more responsible and independent as well as develops their culinary skills.
In the kitchen, your young kids see different objects, colors, and shapes as well as hear their names and remember how certain food smells and tastes. This enriches their inner world no less than an educational game.
3. Write a paper letter to grandparents
I still remember how my parents and grandparents liked to write and to get paper letters from each other. After that, they saved them in one place, liked to reread again and again. Nowadays both adults and kids usually prefer electronic letters. What is stopping us from writing a letter as before?
It doesn’t matter how old your kid is, you can write a letter together, and attach a drawing or a common photo to it. When I was a baby my mom always attached my handprint to such letters. It leaves a great nostalgic memory when you go back to those letters.
After writing the letter, you can go and send it together from a post office to the grandparents, other relatives, or friends as a bigger surprise. It will surely bring a lot of positive emotions both to you and your kid as well as the person who receives your letter.
4. Blanket fort
Once my older sister helped me to build a big fort from blankets in our living room. I don’t remember all the details of her construction but it looked really impressive to me at the time! I have a fond memory of this day, spending a great time with my sister.
In the end, she offered to celebrate our fort and made a nice “cake” from bread with butter and jam. We had it inside of our hand-made castle. It was definitely one of the best memories of my childhood.
Such simple on first sight activities can forever be ingrained in a child’s memory as a bonding moment. To do a blanket fort is relatively easy, but you can also find many online tutorials on how to do it. Go make one!
5. Dance party
Kids love parties. The whole family can prepare a playlist with favorite songs that are good for dancing. Use some decoration, balloons, dress in party suits, and get funky!
Don’t forget to take memorable photos.
You can also prepare desserts or drinks to make the party not just funny but tasty.
6. Make your own magazine
Think what your child is fond of: cars, dolls, makeup, nature, animals or even poems and logic games?
You can use your knowledge and imagination, and create your own magazine together!
I remember how my grandmother combined 5–6 papers sheets of A5 size into a notebook and gave it for me to draw. That’s when my idea for creating a hand-made magazine came. I filled every page with my own creative content by writing riddles, easy tasks from math and grammar, illustrations, and even useful makeup advice.
After that my whole family and parents’ friends enjoyed reading my magazine and asked to make a second edition, which I did with great pleasure.
Let your child be an Editor in Chief of his/her own magazine with your help and assistance.
7. Make a movie about your family
All you need is a camera or a smartphone with a good quality video. You can let your kids be directors for their own movie featuring family and friends. Decide who will be the camera crew, who will write a plot, and play the main characters.
Creating such a film is a fun activity and will remain a good long-lasting memory. After recording all scenes, you can edit or make a compilation of different clips to give it a real-movie feeling.
You don’t need to be a pro in editing, but if you’re not so tech-savvy, ask a friend for a little help or watch a quick tutorial on YouTube.
After all is set and done, organize a movie’s premiere where the family members can enjoy their own work.
8. Home cinema
Whether you created your own movie or not, film nights are a perfect home activity for the family. Find an interesting movie or cartoon, which fits everyone’s preferences. Get the popcorn and drinks ready. You can even make a milkshake or a home lemonade together with a nicely baked apple pie.
It’s a good alternative to visiting a standard cinema salon.
Bonus points if your kids make/print tickets for everyone before starting the movie night. That’s it, enjoy the movie!
9. Handmade cards
This one is suitable for holidays and upcoming birthdays. Most people like beautifully hand-made cards, especially coming from kids.
Let your children be creative and try to come with different designs for holiday cards. If they struggle too much, you can also check out some ideas and tutorials on the Internet.
Beautiful gift bags and wrapping papers, cardstock, ribbons, stencils, foam board, pictures from a magazine, markers, vellum, glue, and other materials can be used for the creation.
Cards can be gifted to each other, or to grandparents, extended family members on holidays and birthdays.
10. Make a show
Learn a song with your kids. Make a music performance or a show for talents with other members of the family being judges. It could also be a small theatre play from your kids’ favorite fairy tale or cartoon.
If you have the chance, dress in costumes to make the show more epic! Different decorative elements like posters, a magic wand, or snowflakes can be added as final touches.
When I was 7 or 8 years old I performed scenes from my favorite fairy tale to my parents and they loved it. The story was about a hare’s adventures, so I made long ears from paper and a tail from cotton. My parents were impressed and super happy, which made me proud.
Did you try any of those? Let me know your favorite activities and ideas for spending a good time with your kids.
