Family Bonding Activities

Family bonding activities are extremely valuable for your child's development.

Children who receive special one to one time with their parents, who feel loved in a safe and secure environment are more likely to feel confident in taking learning risks.

Sometimes family bonding activities go on the back-burner or put at the bottom of the list as more urgent activities arise, such as work, meetings, busy day to day activities and then fatigue creeps in on top.

Try to set aside time for some family bonding activities at achievable intervals, daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly at the latest.

Choose your timing carefully and don't force family bonding times when your kids are tired or not feeling well. Family one to one time together will create life long memories for both you and your children, which will be cherished forever.

Depending on the ages of your children, you can modify the family bonding activities below to suit your circumstances:

1) Create a family day or night. Plan the activities together, you may like to:
- have a dinner take away (special treat meal like pizza, nachos or Thai etc)
- have a movie night
- play games in the park
- kick a ball at the beach
- have a family walk
- sit and talk together

2) Allow your children to ask a friend over to join in with your family fun. This is still a time where you interact with your children and their friends. As well as allow your kids to play with their friends, play a board game all together or have a game of cricket together in the back yard.

3) Look in the local newspaper regularly and keep an ear on the radio for up coming local events. These can often provide some short and fun entertainment for your family to do together. There may be an interesting show for your kids coming up, a festival or circus that would be exciting. Choose activities that would be interesting and fun for everyone.

4) Really busy and over crowded attractions are not alway the best family bonding activities as they can be stressful bustling through crowds and queues.

5) Make a list of great activities to do in each season throughout the year. The reason for this is that you can often think more clearly to plan activities ahead of time, rather than on the spot - what can we do tomorrow? Browse on the internet and through magazines to get some ideas. Include the family in on this to suggest activities for throughout the year. You could create an "ideas" box and whenever anyone thinks of a fun family activity they could write it down and put it in the box. Younger children can tell mom or dad and they can write it for them.

6) Activities need not take an entire day, they may only take one hour. The most important thing is that you make time time regularly for family bonding activities and stick to it.

7) Some short and simple activities may be:
- do a floor puzzle together
- pick some flowers together for someone eg grandma
- play a ball game outdoors eg basketball, T-Ball, soccer, tennis, ping pong etc
- play some board games or cards/snap for littlies
- take a picnic to the park, go on a trek, go camping
- do some cooking at home together and have a feast (great idea if the weather outside is not nice)

8) Create a family project where there is input from all members of the family. It may be to design and build a new family vegetable patch. Then decide which vegetables to grow and plant the seeds. Of course the project continues throughout the year, watering the patch, picking, cooking and eating the vegetables.

9) Plan a special breakfast together, cook pancakes or bacon and eggs. Squeeze some fresh juice, collect some flowers for the table, take a photo of your occasion. Find a special job for each family member so everyone contributes.

10) Hire some pushbikes (even tandem ones) and go for a ride around a park or other safe area.

There are endless family bonding activities for you to do. Investing time in your family reaps extensive rewards that helps strengthen your relationships. You and your children will look forward to these times together. The most important thing is to remain consistent, even if it's just a short amount of time each week.

Remember to let your kids help come up with ideas and be a part of the activity decision making process to keep all involved.