Deniz Realty Partners Guide: Activities to do with Your Family at Home
Playing Games
Studies have recently been done that show that parents who play video games with their children increase beneficial, long-term family outcomes and have a positive impact on children’s adolescence. See Forbes article on that study here. Playing video games together helps parents and children cooperate, work towards a common goal, and face challenges together, which can be a strong reinforcement for positive conflict management and problem-solving skills; all while having fun and bonding. Kids can learn a lot of lessons from video games but having a caretaker figure translate those lessons into real life situation is the best way to solidify them.
If you don’t have a gaming console, playing board games, card games or simple things like hide and seek can produce similar effects as playing video games together. Not to mention, this also helps parents and children feel like time is passing by quickly because time flies by when you’re having fun!
Do an Outdoor Activity
While we encourage people to stay home during these times, going out to your backyard or front yard and having some fun is perfectly fine! Going outside can help kids get some exercise after being inside for so long and can lead to a plethora of activities for them to do. Play in the rain, build a fort, have a picnic or play some sports together! The options are limitless.
Gardening together can also be a great activity to do with your kids. It can promote a healthy lifestyle and dietary options, as well as a great bonding activity to do together! Kids love digging around and learning about everything they can, so this can be a good opportunity to talk about healthy eating and the environment.
Playing a small version of a sport together and making it competitive can have the same benefits as listed in the previous section about bonding together, making it the perfect opportunity to get some vitamin D and exercise while at home!
Read or Tell a Story
One great way to engage your kids in something fun is by reading or telling a story to them. You can make this as interactive as you want, by acting it out or making little puppets, or just reading something fun to them can help get everyone’s minds off of the current situation and into a fantasy world for a little bit. This is great to do at the end of the day or when everyone is feeling a little bored.
Watch TV Shows or Movies Together
Kids all have their favorite TV shows or movies they could watch back to back. But this can be a great bonding experience! It gives you and your children something you both know about and can talk about.
You can also make it a home move theater experience! Build a fort, make some fun snacks and drinks and watch the movie together. This will help keep the kids more engaged and excited about watching something together, and it can change the whole experience to be more fun than just sitting on your couch.
These hard times can present some challenges to keep everyone entertained, but whatever you choose to do as a family is a perfect opportunity to bond together while having fun. It would be better to look back on these times in a positive light because of the way you decided to spend your time together. And who knows when you’ll get this amount of time again!