We can talk endlessly about the benefits of family leisure. After all, it is the family that plays a huge role in the development of the child as an individual. The culture of organizing leisure time, of course, depends on adults. Their responsibilities include teaching their beloved children how to relax for health benefits.
Family leisure is a unique chance for parents to get to know their child, hear him, and most importantly, understand him.
Spending time together contributes to the beginning of true friendship between adults and children. Properly and interestingly organized leisure time is a vivid and memorable experience for a lifetime. Parents know from their own experience that happy moments of childhood are remembered for a lifetime.
How to plan family leisure: 5 tips
In order to spend family leisure time interestingly and usefully, it must be planned in advance.
5 tips for planning your leisure time
- First, you should talk to your household and find out what they would like to do this coming weekend. If everyone has different desires, find a compromise option. Make a list that includes the interests of each family member. Agree with them on an action plan for the coming weekend.
- Start preparing for the upcoming event. For example, you decided to go skiing with the whole family this weekend. This means that mom must prepare the appropriate uniform for the entire ski team, and dad must prepare the skis.
- You always need to have a backup option. You're getting ready to go skiing, and there's a snowstorm outside. Replace your trip with watching an interesting movie or start preparing toys for the New Year. You should have everything ready for this activity.
- As you know, the best rest is a change in activity. This condition must be taken into account first. If dad worked hard all week, he obviously won’t want to go on a hike. In this case, it might be better if you let him rest and play an interesting board game in the evening.
- Organizing family leisure time involves preparing a “springboard”. What does this mean? If you are going to visit the pool or amusement park with your whole family, you need to have lunch ready when you return. Therefore, it must be prepared in advance. If you go hiking in the morning - tents, sleeping bags, provisions, etc. must be prepared in the evening.
A joint holiday with children is not only shared joy and fun, it is a strong bridge to mutual understanding, friendship and love.
Joint leisure with children is a bridge to mutual understanding and a building block in friendship
Joint leisure with children is not only mutual joy, but also part of the educational process. Find out how you can spend quality time with kids and teenagers.
In the first months after the birth of the baby, parents think little about how to spend their leisure time with their child. And how to relax when there are several children in the family? Starting from six months, when the baby already knows how to sit, and his curiosity goes off scale to the limit, most parents think about how to organize their leisure time with their children on weekends. In big cities there are many places that you can visit with children of any age.
- Visit to a zoo, museum, aquarium
- Advantages of child development centers
- Home holiday together
- Family leisure goals
Visit to a zoo, museum, aquarium
The weekend leisure program includes a visit to the aquarium, museum, and zoo. It is advisable to postpone a visit to the zoo until the warm season, when everything around is in bloom and there is no risk of catching colds. Nature brings parents and children closer. Walking past enclosures with animals, mom and dad answer the kids’ questions, satisfying their curiosity. And what delight children receive from the bright colors of parrots, and how many positive emotions there are when they see exotic animals. Love and respect for nature must be instilled from a young age.
Visiting a museum is one of the most educational ways to have a family vacation. If parents are not well versed in paintings, they can resort to the help of an art critic who will talk colorfully and in detail about each painting. The advantages of going to the museum: a visit is possible at any time of the year, despite the cold and heat, bright pictures attract the eyes of children, the history of the creation of paintings is interesting not only for children, but also for parents. Disadvantages: children can become capricious at any moment, which is why you will have to leave the museum early.
Proper organization of children's leisure time in the family is an art that is subject to both mother and father. According to statistics, a large number of men, when choosing a vacation spot for their family, will choose the aquarium. And it's easy to explain. Many representatives of the stronger sex are avid hunters and fishermen.
A trip to the aquarium with the whole family is an opportunity for a father to show a different side to his children. Dad will not only tell you about all the fish he knows, but will also infect the kids with his love for aquatic creatures. In addition, in the aquarium you can not only look at the fish, but also see how a scuba diver feeds them, and even capture all this on camera. Many of these establishments have cafes, so neither adults nor children will go hungry.
Advantages of child development centers
Joint leisure time for children and parents is not only about walks, hikes, and contemplation of the magnificent. It’s also about education, understanding each other, and developing children’s skills. All this is provided by a development center in which parents help their baby learn about the world around him, as well as get to know other children.
The advantages of a development center: the comprehensive development of the child under the guidance of a mentor and under the supervision of a parent, the opportunity to communicate with other children. Many such centers are located close to home. Disadvantages: the price, on average, is about 4 thousand for 8 classes; some centers offer classes to children with colds and fever.
Home holiday together
To bring mother and daughter closer together, great physical expenditures are not required. Invite your baby to play with dolls; if you know how to sew or knit, involve your daughter in this process. Make a simple craft with your child - a flower with candy.
The very first and main friend in a girl’s life is her mother, and how the relationship between the parent and the baby develops will largely determine the girl’s future life, her views on the world and the people around her.
Involve your baby in preparing dinners, cleaning, and caring for house plants. It’s much easier to do this in a playful way than later forcing an adult girl to clean up her dishes and clothes. Read about what to do with your child at home in our other article with a selection of games and entertainment.
Family leisure goals
Leisure time for children and parents not only brings them closer together, but also allows the older generation to feel younger and more active. Making a snowman in winter, hiking in spring, relaxing at sea in summer - all this makes the family more united. If the family does not have financial difficulties, then an excellent answer to the question of how to organize leisure time for children would be a holiday or weekend trip abroad. A change of scenery will have a positive effect on the atmosphere in the family; children will be grateful to their parents for the opportunity to practice a foreign language among the natives and see the sights of another country.
Watching movies together will no longer surprise anyone; modern children require active recreation. Ask your children where they want to spend their time. Perhaps today they would like to go to the circus and tomorrow to attend a theater event. Even a walk in the shopping center will bring children and parents closer together.
Trying on clothes and choosing a toy, kids share their good mood with adults. And how many emotions from shopping you will see in the eyes of your children, and next time you yourself will invite the little ones to go buy new clothes.
The main goal of family leisure is the opportunity to hear each other. Very often, in the rush of days or when they are busy with work, parents do not ask their children what they want. No amount of money can replace parental affection, and a family vacation is a way to show that the older generation hears the wishes of the younger one and meets them halfway.
A strong family is a fortress that nothing can destroy. A joint holiday for children and parents makes this fortress even more impregnable.
Author: Olga Kapusta, especially for the online magazine “Women’s Hobbies”.
What family vacation options are there?
- Active games. An ideal option if they are carried out in the fresh air. Such a vacation will not only give everyone a boost of energy and significantly lift their spirits, but will also become an excellent foundation for laying good health for the child. There are quite a few options for games, and you can choose exactly what the whole family will like - fitness, swimming, playing volleyball or basketball, a family bike ride with a picnic at the end of the journey, or roller skating.
- Dancing. This type of active recreation has become very fashionable today, both among adults and children. And there are also plenty of places where the whole family can learn to dance. All that remains is to choose the direction - classical ballroom dancing or modern. It is not necessary to set a goal to achieve any heights. It's enough to just enjoy your vacation.
- Board games. An option for lazy fans of passive recreation. If the fatigue after school and work is too great, and there is no energy for active recreation, then you can choose one of the board games (monopoly, puzzles, cards, scrabble, etc.), which will captivate the whole family. And if you don’t have the strength for that, then you can choose an interesting movie for everyone and arrange a family viewing in the home theater on a fluffy carpet and with a bag of “goodies.”
- Cultural recreation. Vacation is not only about the beach, barbecue and sofa with TV. Why not spend your holiday culturally? Learn something new, expand horizons, instill in children a love of beauty. If children are still too young for exhibitions and art galleries, you can choose a circus performance, an interesting museum, a colorful performance, or even a new cartoon in a good cinema. Or you can go on a tour of those city corners that even mom and dad haven’t looked into yet.
- We create a workshop at home. If your family consists entirely of creative household members, and everyone has golden hands, then you can find a common hobby that will save the family from boredom on rainy or frosty weekends, and will unite everyone in one creative activity. However, if each family member in this workshop has his own activity, that’s also not bad. A father and son can engage in design, woodworking, or creating robots, and a mother and daughter can engage in drawing, quilling, soap making, or creating toys using the felting method. You never know how many interesting things to do! And lack of experience is not an obstacle, because today there are detailed master classes on the Internet for any creative activity. And if things work out, then such joint weekends can even gradually lead to a profitable family business.
- Family scrapbooking books. An interesting idea that can become a good family tradition. During the week, you need to collect all the little things that we usually put in books and boxes as souvenirs - dried flowers from a memorable walk, tickets from an interesting film, funny photographs, funny flyers from a box and advertisements from newspapers, etc. On weekends, the whole family fills a scrapbooking book with these memorable little things, which is supplemented by funny comments from all household members.
- Family tourism. If you have enough time and money, then this is one of the most wonderful ideas for family leisure. This, of course, is not about a trip to the islands to sunbathe on the golden sand by the ocean, but about healthy tourism that combines interesting excursions and active recreation. This also includes family hikes with a tent, fishing rods and a guitar: we teach children to light a fire, live without gadgets, enjoy reality and simple things without the Internet, distinguish edible mushrooms from inedible ones, survive in the forest and look for a way out to people using moss/ the sun and so on.
Of course, there are many more things to do. We have listed only the most popular and relevant ones.
But the most important thing is not the type of leisure, but the attitude of all household members towards it. How to distribute responsibilities in the family equally?
Even spring cleaning or planting seedlings in your garden with the whole family can be a wonderful family pastime if the household members enjoy spending time together.
