I don’t care if you stay at home with them, work full time, or somewhere in between, if you have kids and you are preparing to build your own house, I have no doubt that their happiness has crossed your mind.
In my case, I am around my kids, well …. always. I have 5 of them between the ages of 1 and 9. We homeschool and we work as a family on the farm. They are involved in plenty of things, but we live in a small town so honestly, I am the one volunteering half the time to head up their activities too. I am their basketball coach, their soccer coach, and up until recently, I was also their teacher in church. If you haven’t figured it out already, I don’t get a lot of time without my kids hanging on my leg and needing me. So building our own house together was a HUGE change for our entire family including the kids.
Even if you are the complete opposite of me, and maybe you work full time, or your kids are in school with tons of extra activities, and you feel like you don’t get enough time with them, owner building will still be a very big change in your kids lives.
None of us want our kids to suffer for our dream of building a house. None of us want them to hate this adventure, or to be angry at us for flipping their world upside down. All of us want to figure out a way to help our kids be as excited about building a house as we are. Right??
I have spent a considerable amount of time over the past few years trying to come up with special little things that my kids would remember about this build as being fun, or happy, or exciting, or crazy, or anything else positive.
So today I wanted to share a list of 20 things you can do to help your kids actually enjoy building a house with you. Things that will make this amazing adventure unforgettable and something that your kids dream of doing someday when they are ready for a home of their own.
- Talk to them about it. Get their opinions, thoughts, feelings, and questions. This is the most important one because kids love to feel grown up and needed by their parents. I don’t care what age your kids are, talk to them about what is going to happen and do it with a huge smile on your face. Excitement can be contagious.
- Let them help “plan” if you can. I remember when I was a teenager and my parents were building. I didn’t get a say in the rest of the house, but they let me design my own closet. That meant the world to me! I felt like my opinion mattered and I loved that closet.
- Get them their own tools. If they are still little, get them play tools. If they are older, get them real tools. They want to help!
- Make videos of them at the new house. Kids love watching videos of cool things they did. They also love showing them to others.
- Let THEM take videos at the new house. Sometimes even better then taking videos of them, is letting the take their own videos. If they are little they will love running around taking video of their new bedroom, or the drywall guy, or the nails on the ground, etc. If they are older, they may really love creating their own videos to remember this experience by. Let them take some video and edit it together on the computer. These will create memories that you can go back and watch for years to come.
- Write scriptures or quotes on the walls. I thought this one was super clever and a cute idea. Sometime during the framing stage and before everything gets covered up with drywall, let everyone grab a sharpie and write their favorite scripture, quote, or message someplace special. Maybe it’s right above where their head will be when they eventually sleep in that room. Maybe it’s behind the mirror they will be looking into each morning before school. Wherever their little hearts desire.
- Let them paint their floor. We still have yet to do this, but I have every intention of letting my kids paint pictures on the subfloor in their rooms. Someday it will be covered by carpet so let them decide what fun pictures they want to have on their floor for a little while. I have yet to meet a kid that doesn’t love to paint something!
- Have a camp out in it. Our family did this one for Christmas while it was being built. Man was it cold, but that is a Christmas none of us will ever forget. We put up a little tent in our great room, piled all the sleeping bags together, lit up a Christmas tree, froze our buns off, and loved every second of it.
- Have a roller blade or scooter party. When your whole house is just subfloor its really great for scooters and roller blades. The kids will think it’s pretty cool that they get to ride all over inside the house.
- Set up a digging area on site. Any little kid loves a good pile of dirt to dig in. Throw in some excavators, tractors, shovels, and cups and you have the makings for a pretty awesome digging pile. The kids will be excited to have their own fun digging site right next to the real life one.
- Put handprints in the concrete. This one is almost mandatory for anyone pouring concrete. If their aren’t little handprints somewhere in your foundation or garage slab, you can’t even call it complete.
- Let them help with the concrete. After building a house, I am not a concrete lover. The stuff is so cool and versatile! One thing I loved about it is that it’s like playing in the mud for adults. In fact, they literally call it mud which makes it even better! Your kids can totally help with the concrete, even if they are little. They might not be much help, but it’s not gonna hurt anything to have them helping spread around the freshly poured concrete, and push it into the corners. If they are over the age of about 8 then they can actually be quite a bit of help so let them. Just have them wear gloves cuz it can beat up your hands pretty good.
- Let them invite friends over for a dance party. Who says you can’t throw a party in your house while it’s still being built? Clean out a room, bring in some speakers, maybe hang a few posters or plug in some black lights, and let the kids jam out!
- Let them invite friends over to write on the studs or paint pictures on the sub floor. These are ideas we already discussed doing with your kids, but if you let them invite some friends over to do it with they may even like it more. Those kids will remember where they wrote behind the walls in your house forever.
- Have a designated spot for their lumber. Let them build whatever they want. My oldest LOVED this one. We threw all the scrap pieces of lumber, nails, plastic, and shingles in his “pile”. He then proceeded to make his own tiny house just following what he was watching the guys do. His mini house was so sturdy that one day they laid a huge truss on top of it and it didn’t even budge. Needless to say, it’s still in tact out in our lumber pile. Too bad it wasn’t quite big enough to play inside or it would have made a great play house.
- Go star watching on the roof … as soon as you have one. We love star watching. Doing it on the roof is even better.
- Let them stay and watch/talk to the subs. Almost every single sub contractor we hired was super nice and friendly to our kids. They let them help out, they answered a million questions, and they got to be pretty great friends. Our kids still tell people the jokes that our drywall guy taught them two years ago.
- Tell them about the subs you are choosing between. We had some pretty funny ones come up. My kids loved to hear the funny stories about us trying to hire people. It also made them feel like they were a part of the hiring process.
- Put each kid in charge of a trade or sub contractor. Let them look over all the options with you, come up with questions for the sub, and listen when you make the phone calls. Let them talk to that sub and feel like they are in charge. So many subs we hired were awesome with kids. All it takes is a few seconds of explaining to your sub that the kid is in charge, plus a little wink, and they might just play it up too. Voila! Happy kid!
- Turn regular trips to the building material store into special outings every once in awhile. If you are anything like me, you may end up going to the store to grab something for the house 5-6 times a week during your build. The kids got sick of that pretty fast. You definitely don’t need to do something special every time, or even every week, but occasionally it’s nice to throw in something unexpected so your kids don’t HATE running to town to grab things. Maybe getting everyone ice cream, maybe stopping at the park, maybe letting the pick out a new tool or item for the house. Anything to mix it up and give them something to be happy about instead of just sitting in the car, going to the same old store, and standing in line AGAIN.
Now I know you guys have loads of other fun ideas to help your kids enjoy your build even more. Please share what you have done, or plan to do, to make this time exciting for your little ones in the comments section below.
~Farmer’s Wife
P.S. If you enjoyed this post, you might really like 8 things I am glad we did BEFORE we started building our house. Check it out!
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Sarah says
Love these ideas. I had gotten as far as planning to write scripture in the walls and foundation, but hadn’t thought of anything else. I think our kids (of which we also have 5, 0-8 years old) will love the scrap pile. They already have their own tool sets, but never have any material to work with.
We aren’t expecting to build for another 3-4 years yet, but I hope to use some of these ideas when the time comes!
Heather says
My oldest wants to add the option of not helping. I think he may have a point in that I can see myself relying on him too heavily for help. I have already checked with them and found out what parts of planning they are interested in, and let them take an active role in brainstorming.
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
I hadn’t even thought of that! Great suggestions for that situation. Thanks for commenting.
Jessica says
Great ideas, I need to implement the scooter idea for sure!! Another idea to add is letting the kids build forts with all the cardboard boxes that pile up. It kept my kids busy for hours last week while the hubs and I worked on the electrical.
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
Great one!