In today’s digital age, it’s easy for kids to get glued to screens and disconnect from the world around them. As parents, it’s best to encourage them to explore offline activities that promote their physical and mental well-being, as well as foster a stronger bond between family members.

Below, we share five wonderful non-tech-related hobbies for you and your kids!

All Aboard the Model Train Adventure

Do you want to spark your child’s imagination and introduce them to a fascinating world of miniature wonders? Assembling model train layouts is a fun and educational hobby that combines creativity, problem-solving, and history. There are many advantages to getting your kids interested in model trains. Not only does it pull them away from their screens—it can also teach them valuable motor functions, creative skills, and get them interested in subjects such as art and engineering.

Discover the Joy of Hiking

Technology is great in moderation, but many kids nowadays spend too much time on their phones, computers, and other electronics. It’s important for kids to spend time playing outside; they shouldn’t be sitting on the couch with their noses shoved against a screen all day. Regular outdoor playtime can benefit their mental and physical health and help them develop agency, among other benefits.

If you want to escape the screens and embrace the great outdoors with your little ones, one hobby worth trying is hiking. Hiking is not only a fantastic way to stay active, but it also encourages curiosity, exploration, and a deep appreciation for the natural world.

Unleash Creativity With DIY Crafts

Engage your child’s artistic side and explore their creative potential through do-it-yourself (DIY) crafts. From origami to homemade jewelry, there are countless possibilities to foster imagination and hands-on skills. DIY crafts teach children to be resourceful and think outside the box; they also offer a healthy medium to express their thoughts and emotions, leading to higher self-esteem and self-control.

Gardening Delights

Another great non-tech-related hobby for you and your kids is gardening. Gardening offers many benefits, including teaching responsibility, patience, and the science of plant life. Together, you can cultivate a beautiful garden filled with vibrant flowers, delicious fruits, or even aromatic herbs.

Culinary Adventures at Home

Transform your kitchen into a bustling cooking school, and let your children embrace the joy of preparing delicious meals. Cooking together promotes teamwork, math comprehension, and healthy eating habits. It also sets your child up for success later in life when they move out of the nest and can no longer rely on you to cook for them!

Encourage your children to participate in hobbies that bring them from the online world to offline adventures. By helping them to engage in non-tech-related activities, you can prevent them from becoming too tech-dependent. There’s a vast and enchanting world beyond the internet for your children to explore, and you can help teach them about it.

Social media sites are a blessing and a curse. They allow people of all ages to connect with one another, but they can also leave children vulnerable to unsafe information. Pinterest is a social media site that is trying to make itself safe for children. If your child wants to use this site to find inspiration, they can.

However, the site hasn’t perfected its safety features yet. As a caregiver, you should know how to help your child safely use Pinterest.

Use Pinterest’s Safety Features

As mentioned, Pinterest tries to make itself safe for children. The minimum age requirement to use Pinterest in the US is 13, although, in some countries, it’s based on the age of consent. Any accounts for someone between the age of 13 and 16 are automatically private. This means no one can see your child’s pins or boards, although anyone can see comments your child leaves on a pin. Accounts become public when the user is 16, but no one can message an account for someone under the age of 18.

Set Up Browser Parental Controls

While Pinterest’s safety features can help protect your child’s privacy, they don’t protect your child from what they could see on the app. Like all social media accounts, Pinterest contains mature content about subjects like physical intimacy and eating habits. The site does not allow people to tag this content with inappropriate words or phrases, but that doesn’t prevent people from uploading this type of content.

Even if the content doesn’t look mature on Pinterest, many pins can lead your child to other sites. Some of these sites are safe, and others are not. The best way to prevent your child from accidentally seeing mature content or ending up on a mature site is with browser parental controls. You can try some of the best rated apps for parental controls that will filter or block bad websites.

Follow Their Pinterest Account

Following your child’s Pinterest account doesn’t allow you to see everything they see. However, you can monitor what they pin. Beware that Pinterest allows for private boards that only the account holder can see. You may need to periodically check your child’s account from their login if you’re concerned they may try to use this feature.

Prompt Honest Discussions

Teens may feel that you’re trying to control them if you want to look at their Pinterest through their login. This is a good opportunity to start an honest conversation about online safety and potentially mature content. Your child should know what information is and isn’t appropriate online and feel safe coming to you if they see something wrong.

You don’t want every honest discussion to feel like a giant warning sign though. Prompt honest discussions about other subject matter your child is seeing, such as recipes they may want to try. You can use these recipes to make cooking a fun family bonding activity and encourage a positive relationship with Pinterest.

You can help your child safely use Pinterest through Pinterest’s safety features and third-party monitors. However, no safety features or browser monitors can replace your connection with your child. Talking with them about internet safety before they get on social media and while they use it is the best way to protect them.

The current generation is growing up alongside the latest technology, which means they have access to the internet earlier than ever. Rather than trying to separate your children from technology, help them learn how to use it responsibly. Here are tips for teaching your kids about information privacy and where to start.

Help Them Understand Personal Versus Private

Information privacy can be difficult to teach to young kids, who tend to share everything that crosses their minds. However, children who access the internet and use smart devices must understand which information they can share and which must stay private.

For example, ensure your children understand that they should never share information such as their home or school address, phone numbers, or full name with strangers online. They should also know to never share this information or documents containing it with strangers they encounter in person.

Use Built-In Privacy Settings

Many up-to-date devices and apps provide privacy settings that help you manage the information your kids can share online. Consider limiting location tracking on your children’s devices so certain social media apps won’t be able to display their locations. As you enable these settings, talk to your kids and walk them through the importance of these settings and why they should be conservative with the information they share.

If you try to enable privacy settings and features without them knowing, it could lead to a lack of trust on both ends. This is why you must maintain open communication about information privacy and the features that they should use to help promote it.

Encourage Kids To Make Their Own Passwords (With Supervision)

Making up passwords for your kids will only get them so far. They will be less likely to remember passwords you generate for them, which can be frustrating for everyone involved. Instead, turn password creation into a collaborative effort. This will help your children understand the importance of creating strong, secure passwords that are harder for hackers to guess. Remind your kids to keep their passwords safe and only share them with trusted friends and family with your permission. These are the first steps to developing good password management habits.

Teach Kids the Importance of Safe Document Handling

Information privacy is also applicable once kids log off their computers, smartphones, or tablets. Remind your kids that they should always be careful when sharing passwords and information through writing. If this information falls into the wrong hands, it could get your whole family locked out of your electronics or various accounts. This is why you should teach them how to use a paper shredder safely. Doing so will also serve as a reminder for your whole household to follow proper data destruction rules and invest in a quality paper shredder machine.

Use these tips for teaching your kids about information privacy to educate your whole family and ensure everyone is on the same page. Open and clear communication is crucial to developing healthy technology habits and ensuring your child’s safety online and offline.

How to Teach Kids to Safely Download and Install Apps

After years of having the kids at home, it can be daunting to send them off for in-person learning. But there are many advantages to getting your kids back into the classroom. Whether you’ve been home-schooling this whole time or you you kept the kids at home due to the pandemic, we have some tips to help you readjust.

It’s Okay To Allow Your Kid To Return to School

While there are perks to online learning, like the flexibility to take classes and exams on your schedule and the ability to access all lecture notes and study guides through online portals, there are some things your kids miss when they don’t leave the house.

One of the biggest benefits of in-person learning for a growing child is the chance to interact with other students they’d never meet at home. It’s the only way they can build new relationships that could blossom as time goes on. The ability to talk with others and make friends is an incredible experience you can’t replicate at home.

Another benefit of attending in-person school is that children can also have more structure than they might have at home. That’s because they need to be in the same place at the same time every day, so they learn about expectations and they develop a sense of responsibility. Plus, even though you’re doing your best as a parent, your child can still get distracted at home by things like the television and their siblings. In a physical classroom, they may be able to focus more easily.

Finally, kids can get hands-on experience in classrooms and labs that they can’t get at home. Sometimes, touching and seeing things in real time can help your child to absorb the information.

Mentally Prepare For A Return to School

There’s also a mental health aspect to the argument of online versus in-person education, and parents need to be aware of the red flags of each situation.

The opportunity that kids get to learn in person with other students is incredibly beneficial because they avoid social isolation, which can contribute to anxiety. While it’s okay for kids to spend time at home, if it goes on for years, and they don’t meet new people, then they can become lonely. Those feelings can turn into anxiety and depression which can feed into social anxiety.

In-person learning can also be a challenge for some children, which is why it’s important to educate them about the potential for bullying and peer pressure. Teach them how to cope with or avoid these stressful situations. Teach them to talk to a teacher or come home and report to you if they’re bullied mentally or physically. Also, speak to them about peer pressure, present some hypothetical situations, and tell them how they can react to each.

Finally, teach them about the dangers of social media and how classmates may try to reach out on Facebook or Instagram and say unkind things. You can prevent negative situations by monitoring their web usage and enacting parental controls so they can’t be pressured to dangerous websites.

Preparing for In-Person Back-To-School

Once you’ve told your kids what to expect when they return to in-person learning and everyone’s on board, you need to choose the right school. Look at local schools and contact the administrators to learn more about the establishment and ask your questions, like how many students are in a class and the type of subject matter they teach. If you really want to know what your kids will experience daily, then ask if you can sit in and observe a class.

If you borrowed or rented electronics from an online school or an electronics store, then you’ll want to return computers, books, and whatever else you may have. Kids tend to put stickers and decorations on their belongings; if that’s the case, you’ll need to remove them. You can remove stickers from hard surfaces like a laptop with products you probably already have at home, like toothpaste. Do the following:

1. Apply a small amount to the sticker.
2. Rub it with a cloth.
3. Wait 10 minutes.
4. Scrape off the sticker with a razor.

You may also be able to follow the same steps with petroleum jelly.

The next step is to talk to your doctor and the school administrators about back-to-school vaccinations. In addition to the COVID-19 vaccination, they may also ask your child to get the flu vaccine and take other steps to ensure the safety and health of the other students. You’ll also want to ensure your kids have safe transportation to and from school.You may opt to drive your child to school and drop them off,  have them take a school bus, or arrange for carpooling with the other children.

If you’re apprehensive about bringing your kid back to a physical school then remember that the experience could do wonders for your child. Prepare them mentally and physically for the upcoming change, and they will thrive in the classroom.

About the Author
Katie Brenneman is a passionate writer specializing in education, mental health, family lifestyle and online safety. When she isn’t writing, you can find her with her nose buried in a book or hiking with her dog, Charlie. You can follow her on Twitter.