How should I spend visitation days with my preschooler?

Getting divorced while trying to raise a young, preschool-aged child isn’t easy. For one, a newly single parent with visitation rights will be struggling to support his or her child to feel safe after the divorce. Secondly, the parent will be trying to come up with activities to do with the child that both of them enjoy.

Some people are naturals at thinking of kid-friendly activity ideas. Others struggle in this department. If you’re one of the struggling ones, why not consider the following two ideas to start you off on the right foot?

Two preschool-appropriate activities

Create a scavenger hunt: Scavenger hunts are a great deal of fun. All you have to do is come up with a simple list of items that your preschooler will understand. Rather than writing the list with words, use simple drawings or cartoon printouts to represent the times and put them together on a piece of paper. If you have more than one child, make it into a race to see who finds all the items first. If you just have one child, you and he or she can do the list together. Take them outside and make it a hunt in nature.

Play the personal information game: Does your child know your whole name, address and phone number? Play a game or make a song to remember them. Try making flashcards with pictures that “sound like” different names to jog their memories of what they have to remember.

You might want to keep a parenting journal to record your time together

Every time you spend a visitation day with your child, keep a simple journal of all the activities you enjoyed together and of everything else you did. This “parenting journal” will be a great way to save your memories, and it will also be a good way to have evidence of the great parent you’ve been should you ever need to defend your parental rights in legal proceedings. Although it’s not likely, it’s always better to be safe than sorry when it comes to documenting the time you spend with your kids.