Family Bonding: 5 Fun Activities That Also Boost Creative Thinking Skills

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Ainsley Lawrence is a freelance writer from the Pacific Northwest. She is frequently lost in a good book when she is not writing about how technology impacts our everyday health and wellness.

Although we don’tdon’t often think of creativity as a quintessential ability that we need to thrive in our evolving world, it’s actually one of the most essential skills in our arsenal. As adults, creativity helps us in many areas by improving our ability to think outside the box, come up with new solutions to old problems, broaden our perspectives, and overcome prejudices. 

This is why it’s so important to help your children harness their creative thinking skills during their youth. There are many ways kids can become more creative while doing the things they enjoy.

Here are 5 ideas that will not only grow your child’s creativity but also provide some great family bonding time. 

1. Puzzles and Board Games

An easy way to boost your kids’ creative thinking skills without leaving the living room is to have a family game night where you all play puzzles and board games. Puzzles require logic and creativity to combine pieces of a picture into one astounding image. In addition to being very mentally rewarding, the act can teach children how to create their own unique pictures using their imagination, which will help them if they ever decide to become an artist, a novelist, or they pursue another creative endeavor.

Similarly, board games are great for family bonding because they often require you to work together as a team to beat the board or reach a goal. Board games also help stimulate the parts of the brain that are responsible for memory formation and decision-making abilities. 

Related: The 34 Best Board Games For The Whole Family

2. Walk Through Nature

For the ultimate bonding experience, take the whole family outside for a nature hike through the local forest preserve or down a long winding trail at a national park. Wherever you go, you and your kids will improve your mental and physical health while building essential creative skills. 

When you walk through the greenery of nature, you’re subconsciously brought back to a more peaceful place where your anxieties melt away, and you feel at ease. Kids experience stress from school and the pressures of growing up. 

The ability to hike through a vast open wilderness allows kids to daydream, which can also boost creativity. Our brains are incredibly fascinating, and when we’re not hampered by stress and allow our minds to wander, the sky’s the limit of what we can think of and envision. Often, a solution to a problem comes to us when we aren’t thinking of anything at all, and your time in nature is the perfect opportunity to try it out.

3. Have Fun With Sidewalk Chalk

Sometimes, the activities we’ve all enjoyed for decades are the secret to improved creative thinking, and having fun with sidewalk chalk is one of them. With the right amount of chalk, there’s an almost unlimited amount of fun to be had as kids draw pictures of animals, family members, sunsets, and anything else their minds may conjure. 

Kids can use chalk to make learning more enjoyable, which makes their studies easier to comprehend. Imagine how much more engaged they’ll be when writing math problems with different colors or creating science diagrams in chalk. When your kids have more fun and enjoy learning, they’ll have a better chance of absorbing the information. 

On top of that, drawing with chalk as a family is as much of a bonding activity as anything else because you’re all out there together. If you invite some neighborhood kids to join and play with your children, you could also improve their social skills. When your youngsters engage with other kids, form relationships, and hone their social intelligence, they build more assertive personalities and learn the interpersonal skills that lead to successful futures. Long story short, playing with sidewalk chalk is a win for everyone.

4. Read Together

Many simple activities make for the best bonding opportunities, such as gathering together during the day or before bed to read a book as a family. Regardless of how young your child may be, you can bond by sitting down with a picture book. 

While you do, your child will envision the story and use their imagination to create their own characters in their head that they could keep with them forever. Read enough books, and your kids could grow up to become authors, editors, or screenwriters. Even if they don’t go into a creative field when they get older, they’ll likely use some form of storytelling in any job they get when crafting emails or explaining complex scenarios to clients.

Related: 19 Books Every Kindergartener Need To Read

5. Music and Dancing

If you’re still looking for a fun bonding activity for a Saturday night, consider having a family dance party complete with the kids’ favorite music. In addition to creating wonderful memories, listening to music can transform your brain into a much more open state, which is necessary for allowing more creative ideas to enter. Dancing is fun, and it also creates new connections in the brain that change how you think so you’re able to come up with unique solutions to common problems. 

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These are just five of the many fantastic bonding activities that will help your kids build the creative thinking skills they need now and in the future. In addition to setting your children up for success, you’ll have a great time as a big happy family. 

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