Hobby Ideas That Parents And Kids Can Have Fun With Together

Being with your kids is a nice way to spend a weekend, even if there are tears and tantrums when your child decides they don’t want to eat their breakfast, or none of the clothes they want to wear are the right colour! Kids can be complicated creatures, but spending time with them is always fun, and allows you to make memories you’re going to hold onto for the rest of your life. 

However, some parents feel they don’t have much in common with their children. This becomes a big problem as your child gets older, and starts spending more time alone in their bedroom or out with their friends. Either way, they’re spending time away from you, and you’re missing the connection you used to have. 

That’s why investing in hobbies you both find fun is the best way to solve the problem. From days out at interesting places to activities you can spend the afternoon at home with, if you’re both mentally present and having a laugh, you’re going to feel much closer and more involved in each other’s life. 

Gardening/Potting

Getting your hands dirty, getting in the soil, and painting your own pots and plant labels? That’s a very fun and practical thing for kids to get up to. If you have a love of gardening as well, get the kids out in the yard with you and make a mess together! 

If the kids aren’t up for clearing out the lawn, loading things up in the compost pile, or helping you add some new edging to the plant beds, you can give them some responsibility and a little bit of creative control over the potting instead. 

Buy some low cost seedlings and some little pots to grow them in, then let the kids paint and glue glitter all over them. From here you can then teach the kids how to pot and take care of plants as they grow, making sure they bloom and flower as the summer comes round. 

Bowling

Bowling is a very approachable sport for all ages, and even if you need the gutter guards up and some help in your spinning technique, it’s a very fun activity to do after school or on a lazy Sunday. As such, if you want to get out of the house a bit more often, take the kids down a local bowling alley. 

Most bowling alleys these days also have arcades and other games to try out, meaning you can squeeze a lot of fun out of the same place. Try out some games of air hockey, have a go on the motorcycle racing machine, even let the kids throw a few darts for the first time. 

If the kids end up liking bowling, try to make time for the activity once a week. If you do, it could soon turn into a family tradition and you might even start making friends down there! 

Playing Video Games

Video games are great for parents and kids to have a go at together. Co-op and single player games alike can be enjoyed, with you taking turns to play the character or try out a minigame. And if you think you’re not tech savvy and couldn’t possibly use a gamepad or a mouse and keyboard to keep up with the pace of a game, even making mistakes can be a funny thing! 

Or you could try out some more simple, classic games together and build up your confidence from there. A few rounds of minesweeper never go amiss, and neither does completing a sudoku puzzle or arguing over the answers to a trivia quiz. As long as you’re ‘gaming’, you’re going to be having fun together in a way your child will find approachable. 

We also recommend downloading a few gentle games, like life Sims or farming Sims, to make sure you don’t throw yourself in at the deep end of a round of Fortnite! 

Model Building

There are a lot of model building brands out there, from Airfix to LEGO, and you and the kids can have fun putting all kinds of them together. Once you have you can paint them, and then choose a place to display them, and be proud of the work you all did together. 

Building models can take some time, and it takes a bit of practice to get the desired effect. This is especially true if you’re building little figurines such as Warhammer; they take some effort to put together, and trying to paint them can be a little bit frustrating. If you start with beginner sets, you’ll be able to slowly move up the levels and become an expert.

However, if you find the process fun, and the kids certainly love using the figures in a table-top game afterwards, keep at it. There are also plenty of tutorials online that you can follow if you need a bit of help. 

Experimental Cooking

Cooking can be fun as is, but if you try a bit of experimental cooking, you’re going to find it a lot more enjoyable. The kids definitely will! After all, you’re throwing things into a pot and seeing how it tastes on the other side. Experimental cooking allows you to be creative, and focus on tastes and colours over presentation and only using ingredients that you know work. Let loose a little and make a mess! 

Experimental cooking has some rules to it, of course. The first step is to limit your experiments to only two or three ingredients and slowly build up your confidence. Let the kids choose these and come up with a potential recipe together. You can go round the supermarket together and think about tastes that might work together, and make a list of ingredients you’d like to try cooking in the future. 

Picnics

Do you go on picnics very often? If you don’t, why not schedule a few more into the calendar, especially now that summer is here? Picnics are a very fun way to spend the afternoon, as you pack a big hamper of yummy food, find a nice spot to sit outdoors, and take along some games you can play as well. They used to be all the rage 30 or so years ago, so let’s bring the trend back in 2024 as well! 

Picnics don’t need to take much effort to arrange either. If there’s a park near your house, all you need to do is put together some sandwiches, throw some juice boxes in, make sure there’s some fruit to bite into (and maybe a few bags of chips as well), and then grab the soccer ball from out the shed. Head down to the park, spend at least an hour enjoying the breeze and the sunshine, and then pack up and head home for homework and bath-time. 

Activity Centres

Is there a sports activity centre in your area? If there is, booking an activity day could make for a great couple hours with the family. 

The kids will get to try out activities they won’t find anywhere else, such as throwing axes (in a safe and controlled environment!), and you can try out a rock climbing wall or jumping as high as you can on a trampoline. Turn it into a competition for an extra level of fun, but don’t let anyone take it too seriously! 

Activity centres love it when families come down, so make a big booking and have some fun. 

Journaling

Sitting down to write in a journal together is a great way to spend some time. It’s a good way to have some peaceful quiet time while still being together; think of it as a form of parallel play that you can still have a nice chat over. Even just sharing some comfortable quiet time makes for a good bonding experience. 

Journaling is a great skill to take forward in life, as it ensures you always have somewhere to put your emotions, and that you feel safe in trying to put them into words.  If the kids know that they can write and that what they’re writing is secret and only for their eyes, they learn to put boundaries in place.

You writing a journal on the other side of the table or the sofa helps them to see that this is a normal and fun thing to do; when mommy and daddy have a go, kids find it far more interesting to get involved as well. 

Make Family Time Interesting for Everyone!

If you want to spend quality time with the kids, find something fun for you all to try out. There are a million suitable hobbies out there, but you can start with a couple from the list above and see how you find them. 

The more you can laugh and have a good time together, the more you’re going to enjoy spending time together, even as the kids grow into the teenage rebellious phase all parents fear!