A thread to help do more with the kids

[Tamadot]

I thought it might be a good idea to have a thread of support for mums like me who tend to not do much with their kids at home.
I've heard quite a few mums on here say they're happy to take their kids out and about but find it difficult to spend time doing stuff with them at home.

Maybe we can make a commitment to do at least one activity a day with them, or get ideas about things to do?

I really want to try to do more with my lovely boys but I do find it hard. I don't want to ever look back and have regrets that I thought washing the dishes and doing the laundry meant that I put off doing anything with them.

Emzar my dcs would love those tasks - ds already designs machines, robots, video game levels and worlds for animals to live in. Thank you!

DS would love elefun it's going on his Christmas list

Picked up Elefun for DD for christmas a few days ago.... Asda have it for £7.49 :) It looks really good fun she's gonna love it x

We didn't have much time today but we did sit and play a board game - Grandad even joined in so we did have some time together.

I can't wait for the holidays as the schedule after school is getting out of control!

Thanks to all the tips and ideas on this thread, I've been doing much more with the kids.
We've been playing together with their toys,
sharing books (a bit different to me just reading them, or ds1 reading to me, just talking about stuff in the book and asking questions. Usually non fiction books),
actually making stuff from some of their activity books - a dinosaur skeleton and a sharks head
I've been playing alphabet games with ds2 and have booked myself in for the parent and toddler swim session at the local pool
Connect 4 has been a hit (haven't played monopoly yet which I've been meaning to)
baking
and just cuddling up with them to watch films rather than just leaving them to it while I get on with something else.

Hello again everyone. Loads more brilliant ideas, I am making notes!

Yesterday we painted jars with acrylic paint (normal paint will dry weird and come off easy) then painted silly/monster faces on them. A coat of pva glue and they should stay looking good. Was lots of fun. Can put a tea light in them. Its meant to a Halloween idea but I was too impatient and wanted to try them straight away.

After getting a website off this thread I found a poem a mummy had used to do an activity with her DD.

Poem: Who's that tickling my back said the wall? Its me said a caterpillar, i'm learing to crawl.

I decided to use the poem and do an activity of my own :)

So DD and I mixed some paint and made an orangy brown colour, mixed in some PVA glue and sand (to add grit) and painted several A4 pieces of white paper. The next day DD drew rectangles on the back of the painted paper, cut them out and we built a very small wall on my kitchen wall.
Then we drew some caterpillars to stick on the wall.

Next idea will be turning the caterpillars into butterflies al la The Hungry Caterpillar.

Oh and I thought after ALL this is done perhaps we can make a Humpty Dumpty to sit on the wall! :)