When you’re a busy parent, you tend to end up with a lot missing from your day to day schedule. Time to eat, sleep, and breathe, of course, but also time to yourself, and time to do things that you find fun. Many busy parents have no hobbies at all, and it’s because they don’t have the time to focus on anything other than the responsibilities they’re already juggling!
But we’ve got an idea for you: how about combining being a parent with something fun to do? There are plenty of family friendly hobbies out there, and especially educational ones, that will help the entire family to learn, grow, and enjoy themselves along the way.
After all, when we make learning fun, we encourage the kids to seek it out in every facet of their life. That always makes for a much richer experience of the world!
So, does that all sound like a good opportunity to you? Then feel free to check out our list below and see if the kids are up for trying out any of the activities.
Gardening
Whether you’ve got a massive outdoor space to make use of, or you just have a small yard and a potting shed, gardening can be a great hands-on, educational activity. It’s the kind of hobby that grows continuously (no pun intended!), and there’s a lot of different things to do within it.
You might love the idea of growing potted plants, whereas one of your kids might like getting to use as many different tools as possible, and another may enjoy decorating the garden the most. If you can all pool these passions together and take on the garden as a team, you’ll get through the wilderness in no time at all, and end up with something unique, creative, and very eco-friendly!
Plus, learning about the outside, natural world is good for kids. Getting covered in dirt and grass stains all over their clothes is part of growing up, and it shows them that fun can be had both inside and out. Of course it may mean more laundry for you, but you can always teach the kids how to use the washing machine, and that they need to do so after a day in the garden!
Painting
Most people are drawn to arts and crafts at some point or another. You might not have stuck with them as an adult, but most kids like to draw, color in, and use paint pots and little easels. So why not look into painting as a family? It’s a pretty easy hobby to approach!
None of you need to be art prodigies, but you could run regular competitions between all of you to see who can make the most accurate portrait of someone else? Or who can make the best picture of a butterfly, and remember all the right anatomical parts that need to be included?
Painting can be a very fun way to pass the time on a boring afternoon. While it’s a little bit messy, it’s the kind of activity that you can just jump straight into. You don’t need to know the rules (unless you want to grow up to use your artistic skills), and it’s impossible to express your creativity in the wrong way.
Baking
Baking is a fine science. It’s not like cooking in the way that experimentation with ingredients is often rewarded; you need to be dead on every single time! That’s what makes it such a great educational pick for the kids. They get to make cookies and eat them, but they learn about accurate measurements and chemical reactions along the way. Be sure to remind them of this when you’re in the midst of licking the bowl out after the goods are in the oven!
Gaming
Gaming can be a great educational hobby in a variety of ways – you just need to play the right games for you and your family. Indeed, we recommend starting with something that’s based in the realms of simple school subjects, like English, math, and science.
A game like wordle is a great thing to gather round on a daily basis, to see if you can work out the answer as a family. Or spending 10 minutes on a sudoku puzzle once a day, maybe when the kids get home from school and have finished their homework? Both are types of puzzles that have some incredible breadth to them, and teaching the kids how to ‘do’ them can be a wonderful teaching moment in itself.
Keep the games simple as you all get used to trying them out, and don’t be afraid to experiment if the first few don’t really grab you. There’s hundreds of thousands of games out there – both video games and board games included – and you don’t have to like them all.
Storymaking
Kids usually love listening to stories, and you’ve probably found a few scribbled stories of their own too. As such, you should think about including storymaking in your regular family time, as it can be a lot of fun for you as well.
Set writing prompts, draw the characters you make, create costumes for the characters to wear – there’s lots to storymaking that flexes the creative muscles.
Pick Up an Instrument
Do you play an instrument? Do any of the kids? If so, there’s no harm in trying out another one – especially if you’re going to be trying it out as a family! And if no one in your household knows how to play an instrument already, this will be a fun new challenge for you all.
The first thing to do is decide on what instrument to try. You don’t want it to be something too complicated, like trying to learn how to play the violin, but you also don’t really want to just try out a tambourine or a triangle either. You need to pick something in the middle that will allow you to spend time on gaining skill in playing it, but won’t become something too time consuming or effortful for the kids.
The guitar can be a good fit here, as can the piano, but it’s entirely up to you. If neither of these instruments really appeal, and someone has mentioned investing in a harp to learn how to play, feel free to give it a go instead!
Once you’ve got the right instrument and you’re all happy to try playing it, make sure you do so on a consistent basis. Follow along with tutorials, and don’t be afraid to play it badly before you learn to play it well. Even if it sounds bad and someone in the house is complaining, keep having fun working it out altogether!
Get the Whole Family Involved!
Educational hobbies for the whole family don’t have to be few and far between. There’s a lot you can do to, number one, have fun, and number two, help the kids on their educational journey. Two birds, one stone!
So why not take up an instrument together, or try baking on a regular basis? You can also try your hand at gaming, whether you like board games or would like to try a few video varieties. And remember that coming up with your own stories, characters, and scenes is some of the most fun we can ever have.
By the time you’re done, you’ll find that it’s not just the kids who have learned a lot through their hobbies!
