15 Ways to Practice Slow Living with Young Kids
If you are looking for a way to be present with your kids and parent with intentionality, slow living may be a great mindset to try out. Here are 15 ways to incorporate slow living into your family’s life:
What is Slow Living?
Slow Living is a mindset movement where people attempt to cultivate a better life for themselves. They do this by living in alignment with their values, focusing on intentionality rather than efficiency, and a sense of mindfulness and purpose.
Why We Practice Slow Living:
I am a mama of four, with young children within a six year age span. Every day is busy, loud, repetitive, and usually messy. If I’m not careful, I can find myself constantly trying to get tasks done, usually as efficiently as possible.
Efficiency can be a great thing! I get really excited to find better ways to minimize time in the kitchen or find ways to work smarter, not harder. But I want to do my tasks more efficiently SO THAT I can focus on my relationships with my family.
I have found, if I am intentional, I can be present with the kids IN the tasks. In fact, sometimes it is worth doing the tasks at a different speed for the purpose of allowing the task to be a way to connect with my family members.
Our family is working toward finding ways to be more intentional with our time and tasks, simplifying wherever we can. We want to cultivate ways for our family to flourish in the context of our everyday life.
This list shares fifteen ways my husband and I have been incorporating and enjoying aspects of slow living with our kids. Not everything on the list may fit each family dynamic. But I hope the list is helpful for your to begin brainstorming when you could practice slow living in your home.
This post contains some affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. See my full disclosure here.
1. Eat Some Meals Outside to Practice Slow Living with Kids
We have a normal sized table and a small, kid-size picnic table on our deck. When the weather is nice, we make it a practice to eat outside.
Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks are all fair game for dining al fresco. And once a week, we take a picnic dinner to a local park to meet up with several other families during the spring, summer, and autumn months.
Eating outside with our kids helps us embrace the mindset of slow living in several ways:
- Clean up is a lot easier outside. So I find myself stressing a lot less about cleaning up a mess, and focusing more on the children eating the food.
- The noise of kids is a lot less overstimulating outside. Something about the bushes and grass help absorb the kids unexpected outbursts. And the sound of the birds or airplanes overhead give us a common thing to notice together.
- Being outside, according to University of California Davis, helps us relax and decreases stress in the body. These are all benefits for helping me enjoy my kids and focus with intentionality on the time I have with them.
Outdoor time is hugely beneficial for our health and well being, and I believe it helps us relationally to slow down and be present with our family when we pair the habit of eating with being outside together.
(For more on the benefits of spending time outside, the 1000 Hours Outside website and podcast are excellent resources)
2. Build Campfires to Sit Around in the Morning
This is another outdoor activity that our family has been enjoying lately. Although I often think of campfires as an evening activity, we have found morning campfires are a fun way to start our day.
On the weekends, Gabe will often get up and take whichever kids are awake first out to the driveway where we have a portable fire pit. They build a fire together, or Gabe builds it while the kids ride bikes on the blacktop.
Meanwhile, I usually toast some bread or slice some fruit for a pre-breakfast snack, boil the kettle for coffee, and get a jump start on breakfast prep.
Then we meet up out at the fire pit to slowly enter the morning. The kids munch on their snack and then start biking or climbing trees while Gabe and I sip our coffee. We enjoy the timeless delight of watching the flames dance and listening to the crackle of the wood, and it’s like we get a tiny little slow living camping trip together right there in our driveway with our kids.
3. Read Books Aloud Together With Your Kids
As a homeschooling family, I grew up listening to my Mom read a lot of books to my siblings and me. I love reading books aloud!
I have sought to instill a love of being read to in my kids. So far, it’s been pretty successful as all three of the older kids will happily sit with me on the couch for a long time when I start reading to them.
One of the great things about reading aloud to my kids is that it forces me to sit down (usually! Special circumstances do apply, of course), stop doing all the other things that can be distracting to me, and the kids and I enter not only the same physical space, but also the same imaginative place.
Reading aloud to young toddlers is important for their vocabulary and language development, but there are many benefits to continuing to read aloud past preschool and even past when children can read for themselves, including bonding with parents, according to Unicef.
If the point of slow living is to intentionally engage in life, reading aloud to kids is a great way to easily implement being present and intentional.
(For more information about the benefits of reading aloud to your kids and how to do that, check out the Read Aloud Revival Podcast)
4. Sing Songs Together to Slow Down
In our home, we sing the doxology (holding hands) as part of our dinner ritual. It takes about 34 seconds. But it has become a very fun way to connect and slow down as a family, before diving into the food.
We also sing hymns together during our weekly homeschool routine, along with learning about the history of the hymns.
Singing socially (as a group) has multiple physical and social benefits, according to this article from the University of Oxford. One of the significant things singing together does is release endorphins and increase social bonding. That’s a beautiful thing to do as a family.
But it also forces us to (you may have guessed this!) slow down – specifically, our breathing. And as any of us know from experiencing moments of tension, intentionally slowing your breathing seems to help you stay grounded and present.
Those are great things to incorporate into a daily routine if you’re trying to incorporate the mindset of slow living into your time with your kids.
5. Watch the Sky with Your Kids to Practice Slow Living
There’s something about “looking up” that helps me feel like I’m stepping out of moments of chaos and into a slower rhythm. Maybe it is the clouds moving slowly, or seeing the stars twinkle.
One of my favorite things to do with my kids is watch the sky with them. If we’re up early enough in the morning, we’ll sit in front of our east-facing sliding door with a blanket around our shoulders and watch the sunrise.
Another favorite activity around here is watching the sunset from our dining room table over dinner (if the timing is right), or sitting on the steps outside on the deck to watch the sky light up in brilliant colors as the sun goes down.
There’s an old Berenstain Bears book that was on the shelf in my childhood home, and I read it many times: The Berenstain Bears and Too Much TV. In the book, Mama Bear institutes a week of no TV watching for the family, and one of the activities the family does during their TV hiatus is to sit outside and watch the stars come out.
We’ve done this a few times with our kids, and it was actually super fun. It was a family activity that encouraged us to be in the moment together, but it still allowed conversation. And, of course, it had all those psychological benefits of being outdoors!
6. Hang Laundry on Sunny Days
Obviously, this idea requires a laundry line. But if you have one, this is a very easy way to practice a slow living type activity with your kids.
Our laundry line is on our front deck, and although I do use our clothes dryer relatively regularly, I try to hang laundry whenever I can (and remember to) on sunny days.
All of my kids enjoy helping me with aspects of hanging laundry. They like to hand me items from the laundry basket when the laundry is going up. And they like to either “catch” items when I’m taking the laundry down, or run and put it away as I take it down and fold it.
Yes, hanging laundry on the line takes more time than shoving it into the dryer. And sometimes, done is better than the most intentional activity not getting done at all. So I certainly don’t
But for me, there’s something about handling each piece of clothing that my family wears that makes me slow down and become aware of how fast my kids are growing. Also, being outside (once again!) has benefits of helping me slow down and relax, letting stress go.
7. Bake Bread Together to Practice Slow Living with Your Kids
We eat a lot of sourdough bread in our house, which means I’m making it several times per week. My kids love to help me mix the dough or shape the loaves.
Bread is one of those things that you can’t rush all that well, so it is a built-in slow process. Kids love coming back for the various stages of the process because each time they peak in the bowl there’s the anticipation of not knowing exactly what the dough will have done since the last peak.
My children love to get their hands a bit dirty, so they are always eager to help with mixing the dough (which I do by hand). And squishing the soft dough is a very sensory activity!
I don’t include the kids every time I make bread, but usually once a week I’ll include a child in some aspect of the bread making process:
- measuring and dumping the ingredients
- mixing the ingredients by hand
- stretching and folding the dough
- checking to see how the rising is going
- shaping and scoring the loaf (they love suggesting ideas for the score)
- preheating the oven (they love to turn the knobs!)
- watching the timer and checking the baking loaf to see how it is turning out
Relationally, it’s a great opportunity to have a small connection. It also is helping them learn the skills of baking and bread making, and all within the context of a slightly slow family chore.
8. Practice the Sabbath with an Intentional Weekly Day of Rest
Our family has been regularly practicing a Sabbath for several years, and we absolutely love that day of the week. (Head over to my post on How to Start a Restful Sabbath Practice if you’d like some tips on this topic.)
It is a day that we try hard to keep our focus on the present and being with each other. And we intentionally do everything in an unhurried way.
In fact, that’s a big litmus test for me choosing what activities I’ll do: will I have to hurry if I do this task on Sabbath? If the answer is yes, then it’s an automatic “no” for a Sabbath activity.
Does that mean that meal times get a little wonky? Yes, absolutely. But if the meals are late because we’ve been enjoying a campfire with our kids, or lost in the story of Felicity Merriman and having conversations about history, I’m fine with that.
In essence, our Sabbaths are when we know we will regularly do half of the items on this list without worrying at all about a to-do list we aren’t getting accomplished. So it’s a big part of intentionally practicing slow living with our kids.
9. Go on Hikes or Walks Together
Walking is a great way to get outside, explore your local area, and all be doing something together. Although we now have kids that will race ahead or lag behind on a family walk to explore in more detail, its still a great way to be together with our kids in an unhurried, slow living way.
We make this work however we need to depending on the season of life. Some ideas for how to do this with young kids include:
- With small kids (toddlers and babies), park the car near a big park with some snacks, and walk slowly for 15-20 minutes while you take in the sights and sounds before finding a fun place to sit to eat the snack
- With older kids, find a playground with a walking track nearby, and let the kids bike the walking track with you while you walk, and then come back to the playground for some snacks and playground time
- With a range of ages, utilize a stroller, a baby carrier, and letting walkers walk even part of the way to integrate walking into your family practices
We’re starting to branch into short hikes after years of regularly walking with our kids but keeping our walks to more populated and smooth tracks. It’s a lot of fun!
Several weekends now we’ve packed up a picnic dinner on Sunday afternoon and headed to a local forest reserve to walk 3 mile wooded hikes (complete with lots of tree roots to climb around). We’ll stop somewhere along the way for our picnic, and our kids spend almost the entire time talking to us.
Hiking and walking together as a family is a beautiful way to intentionally slow the pace of our lives down and make time to connect with our kids.
10. Plan and Prepare for Special Events
Getting the kids involved in holidays or birthdays has been a great way for our family to practice some aspects of slow living. Probably the biggest component is that it requires me to be intentional in what we plan and how I communicate with them.
For key holidays in our annual calendar, we like to do a gradual build up. Easter and Christmas both involve a multi-day or multi-week preparation and observation for our family.
Birthdays are a bit simpler, but I still like to let the kids be a part of planning and preparing. I will typically present a couple options that I would be excited to tackle regarding food and activities, and then I open the conversation with the kids.
Since my children are full of big ideas, we usually have to do some compromising and talking through how to actually accomplish the ideas (and if that is even possible), and then we work out a plan together.
I like to recruit the kids to do some things on their own. So handing over wrapping a present or decorating or creating a game to do together is a great way to intentionally give them some responsibility, while also creating an opportunity to work toward a goal together.
11. Color or Make Art Together for a Slow Living Activity with Kids
I have a coloring book for toddlers and preschoolers that I love to sit and color in with my kids. The pictures are simple, and we can sit side by side, each working on one side of the book spread while we talk and share colored pencils.
This has become a great 10-20 minute activity to do with a child that needs a bit of extra attention or connection. It forces me to slow down and be present, but it keeps our hands busy, which sometimes makes it easier to talk and listen.
It’s also fun to pull out the art supplies and make cards together or create decorations for a birthday. And honestly, the opportunity to create something beautiful – even simple things – with my hands alongside my kids is a valid and beneficial way to spend a little time.
Doing the activity with the kids also helps me distance myself from my perfectionistic tendencies! With the kids doing it with me, it becomes much more about the time together than the end result of what we will actually create.
12. Unplug from or Avoid Screens
I recognize this will look different for each family trying to employ it! But whatever your level of screen use is now, I would heartily recommend trying to reduce the time in some way.
We don’t do a lot of screens with our kids – they watch some youtube videos throughout the week as part of their schooling. And if they ask, I’ll turn on a kids workout video for them to participate in doing after the quiet rest time lull at our house in the afternoon.
Gabe and I make a point to try to avoid looking at screens during our weekly Sabbath if we possibly can. And I try to keep my phone use to “work hours” as much as I can. Which means, for me, I try to avoid phone use:
- in the morning before breakfast (I’m pretty good at this – I leave my phone in an obscure spot to charge and then just forget it is there until after the breakfast rush)
- in the evening after the kids’ bedtime (this takes more discipline, but I don’t want to spend my precious evening time mindlessly scrolling)
- on weekends (although I will check it for text messages if we’re planning a social outing)
- when I’m “on task” for something else (ie: when I have homeschooling to do with the kids)
Honestly, I find if I just reduce my time looking at my phone during my days, I am MUCH more conscious of being present with my kids, engaging in them with conversation and intentionally teaching them skills and values during the course of my day.
13. Grow Plants (from Seeds or Propagation)
For a fun, non-rushed activity to do with young kids, try buying some seeds and potting soil and trying to grow some plants!
I love planting vegetables and flowers with the kids in the spring time. I try to include them in as much of the process as I can, such as:
- choosing the seeds to plant
- preparing the pots with the potting soil
- placing the seeds in the soil
- watering the soil
- keeping the dirt moist every day
- watching for the seeds to start sprouting
- watering them until they’re big enough to plant in permanent homes
We’re currently doing this with our veggie garden, and my kids are so excited over the progress of each little plant.
But the kids also love propagating house plants. My sister bought us a spider plant, and the spider plant has developing little baby spider plants. The kids want to cut the babies off and keep them in water and grow their own little spider plants.
Plants, like bread, can’t be rushed, so it’s a great activity to undertake for slow, simple entertainment. Growing plants offers opportunities for intentionality, consistency, and attention to detail. All of which are valuable aspects of practicing slow living with kids.
14. Burn Candles
For an ambiance boost and a reminder to take a deep breath, candles are a great option.
I like to burn candles on rainy days for some extra light and a sense of peace. We also frequently light a candle at dinner to set the mood to take our time to converse over our meal.
And as much as possible, I like to keep the lights off in the evening and do the kids’ bedtime routine by the fading daylight with some candle support. Obviously, this varies with the season and the currently sunset time. But keeping the lights dim has been a great way for our family to slow down.
We also love to do bedtime reading by candlelight. Once the kids are in bed, I’ll bring a candle into their room and read a chapter or two by candlelight.
It is a great way to provide a cozy ambiance, teach responsibility and intentionality around the candle, and remind me to slow down and be present in the moment with my kids.
For some candle company recommendations in the USA, we love Ambush Candle Co (the “In the Pines” scent and “Folklore” are two of our favorites, and they really do last AT LEAST as long as they claim!). I’ve also heard great things about Farmhouse Candles.
15. Play Card Games as a Family
For a simple, intentional activity to do as a family, pull out a couple decks of cards! We are enjoying playing “War” with our kids, and I’m starting to teach them “Up and Down the Creek.”
Our family also loves a variety of Grandpa Beck’s games, including Gnoming Around, Nuts About Mutts, and Bears and Bees. And Sleeping Queens is also a big hit at our house.
Playing cards is such a simple, basic, fun family activity. It can be done anywhere and doesn’t rely on technology to make it happen. It’s a great option for a slow living type entertainment to do with kids.
I hope this list of 15 ways our family practices slow living with our kids has been helpful for you to generate ideas. It has been a blessing for us to cultivate the mindset of slow living with our family. I’m sure, however you integrate it into your life, it will also bless you.
Let me know in the comments below what ways you’re pursuing slow living in your home! I’d love to hear from you.