79 Suggested Activities For Quality Time With Your Kids - Part 1 - Older Kids

From LifeLearningToday.com

If you have young children, you know that the thing they want most is YOU! They want your attention. They want your teaching. And they want to play with YOU!

How flattering! The love is awesome!

But here's the hard part. Finding the time amidst all your work, home, and personal tasks on your to-do list. Then when your child finally gets your attention, you say, "OK I'm going to drop everything right now. Let's play!" Then what happens? You probably end up doing the same things over and over again, wishing you could remember "What was that cool thing I thought of to do with the kids?"

Ok, so here is the answer to your question, "What should I do with my kids today?"

You can either just print out the list below or you can download a PDF file of the list to make your own 3 x 5 Activity Cards. If you use the Activity Cards you can either select a card by interest or you can select randomly and let fate decide for you! It can make the whole process very exciting for the kids too. A lot of these activities are great to use at family gatherings too. Get everyone involved: mommy, daddy, gramma, grampa, uncles, aunts, cousins! The more the merrier!

79 Quality Time Parent-Child Activities

Older Kids

1. Fly a Kite - Kites are cheap and kids love them. Stay clear of power lines and enjoy.

2. Hangman - this is a fun way to work on spelling with kids without them realizing it.

3. House of Cards - This isn't easy, but it can be fun. It offers a good opportunity to talk with your child to get them to open up and tell you about their day at school, etc.

4. Make Doll Clothes - Use up scrap fabric from old projects or fabric from clothes you don't want anymore. Search for patterns. Here is a nice simple pattern that I recommend. (Downloads as a PDF)

5. Beading - both boys and girls can have fun with stringing beads.

6. Macramé - knotting, weaving, etc crafts are always fun. Search for Macramé on Google.

7. Play 500 - Use any kind of ball. The thrower says "I have 50 points up for grabs." or any number he/she wants. Then the person who catches the ball wins those points. First person to 500 wins.

8. Pickle - Set up the two bases about 20 feet apart. Select two kids to be "it", one at each base. The other kids would divide and go to the bases. The game starts by two kids tossing the ball to each other. The object of the game is to time running from one base to the other without being tagged by the ball. If tagged then that new person is it. Any kind of ball is fine.

9. Marco Polo - water/swimming game. One person is "It." They keep their eyes closed. They shout "Marco" and then everyone else shouts "Polo." The person who is it tries to tag the other players by hearing where they are. Lots of fun!

10. The ABC Game - Great for in cars. Start with finding something that begins with the letter A. First person to shout out an answer get a point. Go all the way to Z. The person with the most points wins.

11. I Spy - Another car game. "I spy something Red." Then everyone has to guess what it is.

12. Name that Tune - Hum a song and see if others can guess the name of the song. You can add this variation too: "I can name that song in 5 notes."

13. Mad-Libs! - these are so much fun. Rainy day or in a car. This is a great one for learning nouns, verbs, and so on. And it is a riot! You can find free ones online in a pinch.

14. Conflict Games - Have children act out with you the difficulties they run into at school. By making it fun you can help kids overcome some of the conflicts that they face. Be creative.

15. Musical Glasses - fill glasses with different levels of water. Either tap with a spoon or rub the rim with a wet finger to make sounds. See if you can play some tunes.

16. Make a Soap Pal - use needle, thread and a face cloth to sew a soap holder. If you have more fabric you can sew on eyes, nose and smiley mouth too.

17. Board Games - Trivial Pursuit for Kids, Life, Clue, Yatzee, Monopoly, Checkers, and Chess are great. Remember how much fun they were? Enjoy them again today with your kids!

18. Charades - Think of a word and then act it out to have the rest of the group guess what the word it.

19. Pictionary - You don't need the board game. Just divide into two groups. Even two people could play. You pick a word from the dictionary and then draw pictures and the others try to guess what the word it.

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God bless your family and your marriage.

Jim Stephens