8 Ways to Spend More Quality Time With Your Favorite People This Year
Calling all moms! As you’re reading this, please give yourself a hug, because you have arguably the hardest jobs in the world. It’s tough to do errands, make dinner, design your house to feel like a home *and* hang out with your kids. We’re here to tell you that you don’t need to be perfect to be a good mom. There are only 24 hours in a day, so it’s important to make your mom-and-kid-time count. As the saying goes, it’s about quality over quantity.
Moms, you don’t need to do everything perfectly to be the perfect mom. You’re still a stellar mom in our books! To help you get the most out of your kid time, we teamed up with McDonald’s to give you a list of eight ways to spend more quality time with your kiddos.
1. Take a nature walk. Every now and then it’s healthy to take a break from the digital world and be close to nature. Whether your kids have phones or not, taking a half an hour or so to walk in nature is definitely worthwhile. Use the opportunity to talk about their week or have them collect their favorite leaves, flowers or rocks. This can be the beginning of an epic rock collection, or you can press the flowers and leaves to preserve them.
<b>Set up an indoor picnic. </b>
McDonald’s Happy Meals® come with a fresh fruit Cutie® so your kids can enjoy something sweet after dinner. Feel free to get creative and include games and coloring pages with your picnic.
3. Ask more open-ended questions during dinner time. Speaking of dinnertime, use the time to get your kids talking! After the usual dinner topics (What did you do at school today?), ask more open-ended questions to keep the convo going. Some good ones are “What’s the funniest thing you’ve ever seen?” or “If you could choose a new name for yourself, what would it be?”
5. Volunteer in the classroom or on a field trip. Isn’t it crazy how your kids spend the majority of the day at school without you? This year, take a day off from work to step into their world and volunteer in their classroom. You’ll get to interact with your kid’s friends and teachers and get a taste of their day-to-day. Your kid will definitely appreciate you being there.
6. Get creative with your bedtime stories. Any parent knows that bedtime stories are a great way to settle down. After you’re finished reading all the books on your bookshelf, change up the routine by incorporating puppets or even writing an original story with your kids.
7. Take your kid on a date. This one might not seem much different than just taking your kid out to the park or the library, but treating your parent-kid time as a date will probably change the activities you do. Think back to your dating days when you planned out fun, adventurous dates and apply that to your kids! Go out for ice cream or take them to coffee (and get hot chocolate for them), or go bigger and take them to a concert. Whether you go big or small, the point is to have fun :)
8. Plant a garden together. Try out your and your kids’ green thumbs by starting a little vegetable garden together. Gardening teaches kids about responsibility, patience and being gentle with nature. This activity is also the gift that keeps on giving! You and your kids can make a habit of watering the plants each week and watching them grow.
