The Habit of Quality Time Together

You know you can be in the same room with someone and really not be spending time with them. As parents we need to make sure that we aren’t constantly just in the same room with our children. We need to have a Habit of Quality Time Together. The real kind of time, time when you’re giving them your undivided attention. Time when you notice their smiles, their joy, their laughter, their sadness, their growth spurt, their anxiety, their dislikes and their passions. The time when you notice the real them and they get to see the real you. This time isn’t going to be available all day every day. Sometimes we will just be in the same room with them but don’t let that discourage you, being in the same room with your children is never a bad thing!!

It’s pretty cold outside these days so I thought I would pull out some warm memories of time spent together with my boys one beautiful spring day.

1st pic: Our picnic spot 2nd pic: boys running to get rocks to throw 3. It’s hard to tell but it’s of two dogwood’s just starting to bloom across the lake from where we were.

4th pic: yellow flower (?)  5th pic: This is where we laid down with eyes closed to listen to Nature 6th pic: Eastern Tent Caterpillar

7th pic: My oldest writing me a note 8th pic.: It’s hard to see but that is of the Great Blue Heron flying over the lake 9th pic: my youngest looking for a rock

Last pic: Reading (practice) time

Our day together included time outdoors, we ended up working on the Outdoor Hour: Nature Close to Home Challenge. It started like this: After taking care of our little chickens this morning we were walking back towards the house to go in and do our sketch of the week. I couldn’t help but notice what a BEAUTIFUL day it was. I thought to myself what a wonderful day for a picnic. A little later I checked the Heart of Harmony website to find out what the Challenge was this week. Would you believe, it was to have a picnic! So Barb at the Handbook of Nature Study Blog and I were on the same page =o) So that is what we did we had ourselves a picnic. While I packed some food, drinks, books, paper, pen & the camera together the boys were digging up worms to give to our chickens. I came out of the house and I ask where they wanted to have the picnic and my oldest spoke up first and said he wanted to have it at the lake. (Yes, they did come in and wash their hands first) So off to our lake we went and we picked a nice spot where we would be half in the shade and half out. The boys love the shade and I love the sun. We enjoyed our lunch and then we laid down with our eyes closed and listened and these are the things we heard: my youngest whisper he loved me, a dog barking, a dog running through leaves, airplanes, automobiles, cardinals and other various birds and the wind moving through leaves. Then we looked all around and saw the result of the wind moving through trees and over the lake water, birds flying, insects flying, a caterpillar crawling, grass, a crow flying, a cloudless sky, a huge tree shadow, dogwood trees, rocks (that did get thrown into the lake by our boys), a Great Blue Heron fly over the lake circle around come back and land for a couple of moments and then fly off again, flowers, various trees and a dragonfly. My oldest said lets see what we smell so we closed our eyes and breathed deep but we couldn’t just pick up on one or two smells but we enjoyed trying. During our time outside my boys threw rocks in the lake, tried climbing a tree, threw a tennis ball to our neighbors dog, chased a dragonfly, held a caterpillar, ran, my oldest wrote me a note that said he loved me, I read the bible and we prayed together, I read to them a little from a book called Frightful’s Mountain (it’s about a Peregrine Falcon), my oldest read to me, my youngest tried to read and by their choice we did what my youngest calls numbers (which is verbal math games). It was a wonderful day with my boys out in God’s Creation!!! Thanks again to Barb at the HNS blog for the inspiration challenge!

I encourage you to find old ways and new ways to spend some quality time with your children!! Below are a few ideas, if you happen to read this please share your own ideas.

Nature walk or just a walk with no agenda

Board & Card Games

Nerf Gun Fights =)

Art or Craft project

Reading a book

Listening to an audio book

Riding bikes

Just talking

Home Schooling

Baking

Cooking