To ask what activities you actually enjoy doing with your small children?

[Tryagainplease]

I have a just turned 4 yo DS and I have to admit that I am absolutely rubbish at playing with him.

Are there any games you like to enjoy playing with your small children or do you just grin and bear another ‘let’s build a ramp for the cars’ game

In all seriousness though, he is great at solo play and I love taking him out and about and talking to him about stuff etc but I do struggle to think of things to do when we are at home. Any suggestions please?

Love Orchard Games. DD (2yo) is in to a couple and it's genuinely a lovely way to play with her. I have a few of the Haba board games on her Xmas list as they have different types of pieces, not just card and I think she'll enjoy them.

Plus craft, sometimes I make them up other times Baker Ross kits are good value & simple.

@hotmeatymilk

Dr and patient (I lie down and be the patient).

Bear hunt (I lie down and be the bear, waiting).

“The crawling game” (I lie down and wait for her to pounce)

Etc. Anything where I get to sit still and she does the playing is a winner in my book.

You are a stone cold genius.

I found this quite a hard age as she refused to play by herself EVER, and I bloody hate role play. Reading endless books was my go to.

She's 7 now and we can do so many more activities that I actually enjoy, like baking and decorating, Draw With Rob, someone at holiday club taught her to play chess and I was delighted. And setting all the Sylvanians up into little scenes but not actually having to do the role playing bits

I quite like building marble runs, building train tracks together, and drawing along side each other. And memory game because its genuinely a game where we are evenly matched. Actually I lie they are better than me!

Current favourites...
Snakes and ladders
Duplo Or sticklebricks
Drawing
Reading
Playdough
Kinetic sand

Lego, sensory play, playdough, drawing/painting, making models or tunnels out of cardboard boxes, baking and decorating, board games, reading stories.

Basically anything structured with a clear beginning middle and end I was fine with.

The "let's pretend to be a bat flying over a Sandy beach" type of endless role play left me bored to tears. I was in awe of several people in his life who actually seemed to enjoy it.

These days I mainly get asked to join in Roblox games which I actually love and get quite carried away with

UNO. My DD could play pretty well from three and beat us at four. We still play and she’s a teenager!

My 6 year old dgs lives with us and everyday is a make believe adventure 🤣 We go dino hunting and look for clues. We also love hide and seek with nerf guns. We get a roll of lining wall paper and draw out either a zoo or a dino Park type map with the animals, gift shop etc. Floor is lava game with cushions. We do alot of made up stories and sometimes use his teddies to act out parts. Oh and jigsaw puzzles he's loved since he was younger.

I know it's so good for kids but I absolutely hate pretend play. Well, I do love disappearing into my own fantasy world but not being basically a prop in Ds' fantasy world.

I love:
Reading
Playing board games / structured games
Building with blocks
Baking
Just running around

4 is a great age 😊 4-7 years is the best time to have fun with them. From 8 they are so independent, and before 4 they don't have the vocabulary or attention span. But 4-7 they will actually do stuff with you. They want to hang out and learn, bake, do crafts and junk modelling, build Lego, play board games, watch movies, they get excited by the seasons and different occasions and holidays. Everything is new and they ask so many questions. Then at 8 y they start taking less and less, more concerned about their friends than family time. I find the best thing is to get them involved in whatever you enjoy doing. At that age they can even be compliant to do housework and other chores with you if you make it fun.

@MiddleAgedLurker

We used to catch a bus and sit up on the top deck pointing stuff out of the window. Then tea and cake at destination before doing the same in reverse. Good for a wet day. Also a favourite way to spend a morning was getting out loads of books from the library (you can take out so many kids books!) and lining up on the sofa to read them all.

I love this idea! Thank you!

It took me a while to realise that I didn’t actually have to do the imaginary play stuff with my children (other than accept a pretend cup of tea or play doh cup cake).

I did reading, built Lego, train sets and stiklebricks which I then expected them to play with after. Jigsaws or orchard games, arts and crafts.
Parenting is just like any other just like any other job - you’ve got to play to your strengths. My children had enough contact with other children to get their interactive imaginary play fix so if I didn’t do it with them they weren’t missing out!

📍Tummy Ache board game is bearable
📍Cats and Kittens memory game is also bearable
📍Dobble is not awful, gusting towards slightly fun
📍Catching a train somewhere is ok provided the destination is not Severn Beach when the only cafe is unexpectedly closed
📍Pokémon Go gets you out of the house and is a magical tool to make them walk long after they have reached DefCon4 of complaining. Plus you can shamelessly exploit children by deploying them into earning you XP and stardust which are both useful
📍Tightly-controlled baking is not awful, but only if making things you like to eat
📍Getting a roll of lining paper and making a banner for someone’s birthday or to cheer them up - I draw the outline of the words and they paint in the lines
📍Getting popcorn and a blanket and making an occasion of watching a film with them that you also like
📍Sculpture trails have weirdly always been a hit here and can jazz up a grey, drizzly winter walk a bit for the grown-ups
📍National Trust properties - these are not entirely ruined by taking children and there’s usually something to gladden the heart

I think enjoyment of activities with children does to some degree depend on the children you actually have, and their personally types. I have three boys (ages 8, 5 and 5), two of whom are raging extroverts and one who is a standard extrovert, and the sustained noise, mess, physicality and vociferous squabbling associated with any activity, together with the intense parental curating required to make it work smoothly and without bloodshed does tend to reduce the enjoyment by 85-95%.

I have met parents who enjoy activities with their children. Mostly they are parents of an only child or two children

I’ve always liked going out and about with them and doing physical outdoor stuff

For indoor stuff, I enjoy playing Lego and duplo with them, some board games. Don’t like the imaginative role play games!

All the orchard games. They are actually really fun to play. My 4yr old loves Tummy Ache, Shopping list, Rhyme Robber…. The list is long. You can’t have too many of these.
Also I love building marble runs with the magnet tile/pipes set. I wouldn’t even care if my kid wasn’t joining in, it’s that fun to build! Cannot recommend this one enough!

Role play, mostly they are a doctor and I am the patient, I get to lay down! I get cream rubbed into my arms and feet etc
They also like to be a policeman or teacher so I just go along with whatever the scenario is.

We like to read and sing nursery rhymes, or will play dont fall in the ocean where we each pretend to fall off the boat (bed) and the other desperately clings onto a leg or arm.

Camp building with throws etc and chairs pushed together

Kinetic sand is quite enjoyable and sometimes we do painting, currently we make Christmas cards. A bit too messy for my liking but I know dc loves it.

My older ones like to play football or go out on bikes. If we are bored and stuck indoors we will play with playing cards, monopoly, frustration or stuff that can be done on paper like hangman or noughts and crosses.

We all like the park when the weather is fine.
When chilling for the night and usually in bed we will do word link games or guess the song, we will go on spotify and play a few seconds of the intro of a song and the other has to guess what it is.
if out in the car we do animal noises etc if we see a specific colour car.
Just daft things like that is enjoyable for them.

These are not done every day, sometimes I can't be bothered or they all just play together whilst I get on with other things

I loathe boardgames but my sons still make me play them at Xmas and they are all adults! I also couldn't cope with pretend play so tended to do things that needed doing but make it fun. They loved making bread, shaping their own roll for tea, a hedgehog or snake often evolved, or rolling out the dough and making their own pizza. Swimming, cycling, feeding the ducks, painting huge pictures often in the garden to prevent mess 😉 big tub of warm water and bubbles to clean up although that did usually end up with water fights and three soaking wet boys. Making a shopping list, sometimes with pictures then they had the task of finding a couple of the items at the supermarket with their own list and pen. I bred early readers that way and never had a tantrum in a supermarket as they were too busy/involved in the task at hand.

I have a 5 year old dd and 4 year old ds. I rarely play to be honest mostly supervise but there are things I will get involved with. For example reading before bed, baking, arts and crafts and games like catch or what's the time Mr wolf or Simon says I will actively participate in. Mostly we run around together and that is fun for us all or we do roleplay so play at shopping going to a restaurant, cooking meals.I get no joy from lego or playing with barbies so don't do it and am all for kids playing together or independently without needing adult interaction constantly.

This is giving me lots of ideas, I hate pretend play as well!

Marble run, dobble, kerplunk, bike rides, painting, colouring in, balloon keepy uppy, table football