Feeling overwhelmed by your homeschool routine?
If you're parenting and homeschooling a preschooler, it’s easy to get stuck in a cycle of checklists and lesson plans. But making space for joy, laughter, and connection can transform your child’s learning and your relationship. In this post, you’ll discover simple ways to bring more lighthearted, meaningful moments into your daily life, even on the busiest days.
I'd like to share with you a few of my favorite ideas for intentional time spent having fun with my children. Hopefully, you find them useful and get some ideas of your own from them.
How fun moments can strengthen your child's motivation
Playing, laughing, being silly, and being spontaneous are all crucial to building a strong relationship with our child. Although they may not seem particularly important to us in the rush of everyday life or make it onto our to-do list, they are really critical.
When you take the time to engage in those activities with your child, it goes a long way to helping with the other things, maybe the more tedious tasks, and the things that you and your child don't necessarily enjoy engaging in as much.
One example from my own family is bedtime teeth brushing. When my children were little, this was always a task that seemed to cause conflict in the evenings. My kids were tired, I was tired, and I was trying to get them into bed. They were trying not to go to bed. Getting them to brush their teeth was always a tedious task and seemed to be the point when things would devolve into tears or conflict.
But I did notice that if I had taken the time to have a more relaxed, more joyful evening with my children beforehand, had some fun, some laughter, if I had been intentional about incorporating that just beforehand, that task seemed to go much more smoothly. I had more patience for it. My children had more patience for it. And so I don't want you to think of it as necessarily not wasted time, but I want you to see the greater benefits.
It's not just fun at the moment, but it's also a time to relax. Let go of the to-do list and agenda and spend some fun and unstructured time with your child. It really does translate into other things on our to-do list.
- It helps build playing with your child and those silly moments that come with spontaneity.
- It strengthens your bond.
- It builds the relationship,
- It builds trust with your child,
- It also cultivates characteristics such as fortitude, patience, and perseverance.
It builds a willingness to engage in some of those other tasks that maybe neither one of you wants to do so much. Whether it's cleaning up the toys, brushing the teeth, or engaging in a particular learning objective, there's more willingness to do that when you've taken the time out first to engage them on a fun level.
Unexpected acts of play that build lasting memories
So, here are some ideas about how I used to love surprising my oldest girl when she was very young, and it was just the two of us.
- I used to love to surprise her with milk and cookies on the porch,
- A surprise trip out for ice cream that they were not expecting,
That can be a wonderful bonding moment and an excellent opportunity for you to catch up. And it's just a joyful surprise for your child. Anything like that that they're not expecting. Anything out of the ordinary, anything that seems sort of uncharacteristic of mom or dad to want to engage in.
It could be like, oh, it's raining outside. Let's go and jump in puddles. Or you could be out doing your normal routine for errands at the grocery store, and your child knows that next you need to go to the pharmacy, but instead of the pharmacy, you take a detour and stop at the park, and you play with them on the playground equipment or in the sandbox, things like that.
It takes a little time, but it goes a long way in bringing joy into your relationship with your child. Take that time to get to know them as people, enjoy their personalities, enjoy their sense of humor, and tell jokes. And so this doesn't have to be just one-on-one things with your child.
You can involve the whole family. Tell silly jokes at dinnertime. Have a family movie night. Have a family board game night. These are wonderful ways to just relax and incorporate joy, fun, and laughter into your day. Remember to intentionally carve out time to do these things.
Make space for individual time: Why it matters so much
Speaking of one-on-one engagement, if you have multiple children and it's relatively rare that your child gets that one-on-one attention, another great way to ensure that you have that bonding experience is to set aside that time, whether it's time to sit and read with that child one-on-one, or you take them with you on an errand.
So it doesn't always have to be fun and games. You can go on an errand, but take just your little child and give them that attention. Let them help you with the task. Talk to them about the things that they're interested in, that's a really special time, not just for you, but also for them.
And once again, these things do really translate to making your life easier in other areas because you feel that connection. You feel like you know each other, you feel like you're on the same team, you feel like you're working together, and it goes such a long way to your relationship with your child and to just plain enjoyment of the process of having children.
Parenting is very hard. Again, once you take on the task of educating your child, it does add more difficulty, potentially more tension, and more conflict to the situation.
And so, you have to combat that with more fun, more laughter, and more intentional joy. I hope you find some time this week to try out some of these ideas or come up with your own, and take some intentional time to enjoy your child and see the benefits. Start to notice the benefits of doing so. I hope you have a wonderful week, and I look forward to seeing you next time.