As a mom of five young kids (5 and under), I get this question a LOT. How do we cultivate quality time with young kids (and at the same time actually take care of our house)!? Listen in to today's episode for advice from several mamas: 

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Here's the question I got:

“Ideas for quality play time as parents of young children. How do you keep your kids busy while keeping technology to a minimum? Do you have ideas for playing WITH your young ones? Ideas for educational play? Ideas for getting young ones to play independently?”

I know I have some thoughts and ideas on this, but at the same time, I am in the trenches of this myself with my oldest two only being 5, my middle two being 2, and my baby is only 16 months. So I turned to the best source: Other women and what they have found to be the most helpful!! 

If you want to come over and read all the answers, you can do so here. 

Reading Together: 

I have found that for me and for them, reading together is one of the most bonding things we can do together. We have a new routine of a morning basket where we store our kid Bible, a hymnal, a few chapter books, and a few fun educational books. We alternate going through the books each morning, reading from 3-4 of them each day. 

We keep the reading short and quick! Reading together was one of the #1 recommendations from the gals I asked. Another great suggestion is listening to audio books together. You can even do this when you are running errands in the car, etc! 

In our basket: 

The Jesus Storybook Bible

Adventures with Waffles

Hymns of Grace Hymnal

The Usborn Children's Encyclopedia

Jame's Herriot's Treasury for Children (this is my current FAVORITE book with the kids!)

The Usborn Book of Science Activities (Volume two)

Do a dance party! 

This is another very popular suggestion I saw! And we love doing this!! I sometimes, but not always, participate in the dance party. But it's such a fun way to turn around the attitude in the home, especially on a cranky day. Or to get people moving and to have a little fun together! 

Singing songs together is another great suggestion. Singing fun and silly songs together is obviously fun! But we have started memorizing more hymns together. I love that we can all sing them together and they are learning them for Sunday morning worship. 

We have been using the new hymnal from the Master's Seminary: Hymns of Grace. Jason got it at a recent conference he went to and we love it! 

Impromptu dance party in the living room!!

Rotate Toys & Keep it special! 

I did this a few years into my parenting journey when I was frustrated with them not playing with their toys. So I took older moms advice and cleaned out half their toys. These toys went into the shed and about 6 months later I remembered I did this. So I packed up all their current toys - and then brought the long forgotten ones out and it was like Christmas day!! 

Shelley had a great tip: "Sometimes I would set up the toys in a fun way before my kids got up (train tracks or a farm or whatever). They usually jumped right into playing as it looked more interesting than the usual buckets of toys that they had to set up. Another thing my kids loved was to take a bucket of water and some paint brushes and “paint” the deck outside." 

Or just play in a box!! ;) That will keep them super busy as well!