Fun Ways to Spend the Day with Young Grandchildren

Spending the day with your grandchild can be fun, and it does not have to be expensive or time consuming. I often spend the day with my three grandchildren so I always have plenty of ideas, and I will share some of my favorite ways with you.

My grandchildren are one, three and six years old, so I try to keep activities short and fun but also educational in some way. With the grand kids this age we are not as limited as one might think, we skip motorized forms of transportation as much as possible and take walks. The world we live in is much better seen on foot locally for the most part.

We often walk to the local park, where there are plenty of swings, slides, and things to climb on. There are also picnic tables so we can take a lunch to enjoy while we are out in nature. This park is just a few blocks away from my house so we put the baby in the stroller, and off we go. As we walk, we see things, things the little ones would miss if we took a car.

I live in a small rural town where there is plenty of greenery. Weather permitting we talk a walk around the neighborhood. Plenty of squirrels are gathering nuts and scampering around from March until late December. Walking sticks, flowers and many other wonders of nature can be spotted on our walks. Everything we spot out there is open for a discussion or inspection if it's safe.

Rabbits can also be seen occasionally hopping around, so if possible we bring some carrots along on the walks to feed the rabbits. Of course, these are wild rabbits, so carrots must be tossed where the rabbits can find them. This only works if the grandchildren and I see a rabbit while we are on a walk. Then we can wait patiently and see if the rabbit goes after the carrots.

Going to pick blueberries or even strawberries is a great way to spend some quality with grandchildren when they come to visit for the day. I have taken my older two grandkids to a local blueberry farm to pick blueberries. While we are picking the berries, we talked about safety issues, snakes, and bees as well as how to tell if they are ripe and what to do with the berries after we get home. Once we got home we made some blue berries muffins and had blueberry pancakes for supper.