Sharing a hobby is a great way to bond with your children – you can learn together, develop skills together, and create shared projects that stand as physical evidence of your bond as a family. You need to think carefully about how you share your hobbies with your children, though. You need to think about their skills and attention spans, tools that might be simple for you to use but dangerous for them, and ways to tempt and maintain their interest and engagement.
Today we’re taking a look at some hobbies to help you make them fun for all the family.
Crafting
Many people enjoy crafting hobbies, from knitting and embroidery to scrapbooking and origami. In some ways these can be ideal for children to get involved with: they’re practical, tactile and produce colourful, interesting results! In other ways, they’re less ideal: most crafts require methodical, painstaking work, use sharp tools like scissors knives and needles, and projects can easily be broken or ruined by careless hands, or simply hands that haven’t developed the fine motor control of adults!
The best approach may be to find a craft your kids can work on happily and effectively while you work on yours – you can all work together, all tidy up together and show off the results to each other! While you get to work on your rainbow box, your kids can be working on a paper loom or french knitting doll you’ve set up for them, with you to supervise the use of any dangerously sharp edged tools!
Cooking
As well as a basic necessity of life, cooking is also a popular hobby, with people developing their skills, and taking a great deal of satisfaction in laying a carefully prepared plate in front of their family, friends or loved ones.
Cooking is a great hobby to share with your kids – though only under supervision. You can start by asking for their help in making things they like to eat. Learning how to bake a cake they’ve previously enjoyed eating is a great way to get them interested, and cake recipes are often more simple than others, providing a good introduction to basic skills like weighing and stirring and producing a sweet and tasty result!
If you want to share your love of cooking with your children, you need to be aware of the potential for mess and spillages! Factor in extra time for cleaning up (and teaching your kids that cleaning up is much a part of cooking as the fun bits), and make sure you’ve prepared by dressing your kids in easily washable clothes protected with aprons.