Ever watch a young child dance? It’s fun. They’re just so unashamed.

Why not join in?

Put on some fun music and get the whole family dancing. It’s fun and can be good exercise. Don’t worry about what your kids think. You can even have a silly dance contest to see who can be the funniest while dancing.

Or you can teach your kids whatever you know about dancing. If you’re like me, that’s not a lot, but if you’re a good dancer they might appreciate the practice later on.

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One of the fun things about taking a family walk is all the leaves and such you can find. Take advantage and make a collage when you get home.

You can think of different themes or just do a “stuff we found” collage. Maybe look for seeds, or different kinds of leaves.

This can be a great way to encourage the entire family to pay attention to what’s around them as you walk. Not to mention that younger children in particular love making crafts.

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A family newspaper can be typed up on the computer or you can use it as writing practice for younger kids, then glue the whole thing together. You probably have the supplies at home.

Start out by teaching your kids the basics of creating a story for a family newspaper. You can have each person interview someone else in the family. Help younger kids come up with a topic and questions to ask. Questions such as “What does Mommy do?” or “What is (child)’s favorite activity?” can be a lot of fun.

If you work it up on the computer you can even print it out or send it by email to grandparents and other relatives who might get a kick out of seeing what everyone is up to.

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Happy first day of spring. What better way to celebrate by enjoying the next rainy day you have?

Most kids love to play in the rain. I know mine do. And make sure to splash in the puddles. It’s a simple pleasure that many adults forget. Just dress appropriately or have towels ready so everyone can dry off quickly after playing.

It’s not the rain that causes colds, after all.

After playing in the rain is a nice time to curl up together under blankets with some hot chocolate. Watch a movie or just talk about the next fun things you want to do together.

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Most families have a lot of movies, most of which only occasionally get watched. Rather than buy or rent others, arrange with another family to trade movies around regularly.

Keeping track of who owns what can take some work. You can stick a mailing label on the boxes to keep track of who owns what, and keep a list of who has borrowed what so that you know where particular movies have gone.

This of course takes a lot of trust, but it greatly cuts down on the need to buy or rent movies. Just beware of special favorites of the kids. Tempting as it may be to get rid of that movie that is requested 200 times a day, even for a short time, some movies should be loaned out only once the kids are sufficiently tired of them to share well.

Then again, the movie can always go over  to have the kids watch them together.

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Head out on a family walk and collect leaves as you go. You don’t have to go anywhere special to do this; pretty much any neighborhood is going to have a good variety of leaves you can pick up.

Leaves can be collected and glued to pages, or used in craft projects. You can teach your kids how to identify various leaves, something mine find truly fascinating.

Of course, you’ll need to know something about leaves yourself. You don’t want to go hiking off on a trail and find out you’ve picked poison oak or poison ivy. That’s not a fun way to make a day memorable… until you can laugh about it some years down the line.

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Playing with shadows is easy. You don’t have to get out any equipment, although you can.

Kids can make letters with their bodies, learn how to make animal shapes with their fingers or try to make it look as though they’re doing something they normally can’t do. All you need is some sunlight making a long enough shadow to see.

If you want to get fancy, you can hang up a sheet for the kids’ shadows, with an audience on the other side. Add in some dressup clothes and props, and they really can put on a play with their shadows.

This can be a spontaneous game anywhere, not just at home. You can make a game of calling out to the kids to make letters with their shadow just about any time.

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Many children love to draw. Yours may well draw just about chronically, with or without you. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be a family project.

You can have free drawing, where everyone draws as they please, or set up a theme, such as scenes from a recent family vacation.

Kids are often fascinated by how differently adults draw from how they do it. You may think that your artistic skills are nothing much, but your children probably won’t care!

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We had a lot of fun today. Went to the school playground after dinner and all just played.

And discovered that my husband and I still have that spark.

OK, so the spark was static electricity. You combine dry air with the usual plastic playground equipment, and you can give some pretty good shocks after going down the slide. We had a lot of fun either tapping the person at the bottom of the slide or kissing each time.

Got some pretty good shocks that way, which is of course what started the spark jokes.

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