If you are a parent of young children, you know how hard it can be sometimes to find fun activities to do with your kids, that can compete with their use of the TV and Internet for their attention. Here are a few ideas for photo projects to try with your kids.
Ideas for photo projects
As you may have seen, in yourself and others, when kids grow up, their fond memories of childhood often involve activities they did with their parents. Activities that involve photography will be enjoyed by almost any kid these days. Almost everyone has a digital camera or a cell phone with a camera, so it can be an inexpensive medium for photo projects to help you bond with your child. They might also learn a few new skills or gain a love for the art of photography along the way.
Personal photo projects
Some fun ideas for personal photo projects include customized gifts that have your own photos. They make wonderful birthday, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day or Christmas gifts. Family photos and snapshots can be displayed in many ways other than inside a frame on a wall or desk. You could print photos on stickers and place them on a decorative item, or even use an iron-on transfer to make a t-shirt. Or you could print photos and print them on plain copy paper and let your child cut out photos and create a collage. For something a bit more polished, you could use the tools available at Shutterfly (also check out discounts from Groupon Coupons for Shutterfly), to make items such as calendars, coffee mugs or photo books.
Make photo albums
Make either print or online photo albums with photos the child took. The photos could be of anything, such as a family photos, photos from a trip, pets or something that the child enjoys. For example, you could go for daily or weekly walks and look for birds to photograph. Then the child could make an album of the best pictures of each species of bird. The child could learn how to identify birds and learn about their habitats, over the course of the photo project.
Make funny Memes
One of the fun ideas for photo projects are to make memes. There are many free, easy-to-use software programs and meme maker apps for putting captions on photos or for adding cartoons or decorations to photos. Have some laughs with your child by making fun and silly photo memes, to send to friends and family or to post on social media. Along the way, you can talk with your child about what makes something either mean or funny and what is appropriate or not to post online. It will help their socialization skills in this modern age.
Themes for photo projects
Young kids often seem to be living life at high speed all the time. Getting them to slow down can be both a mental relief to a parent, but can also stimulate new kinds of thought in a child. Macro photography can be a fun project or hobby for children and it can help them become interested in science and biology. You can get detailed photos of very small objects or living things in several ways. Your child could use a camera with a zoom or macro lens. You can also get an inexpensive snap or clip-on macro or microscope lens for a cell phone. These are available on Ebay for less than $10 an can zoom up to 60x and have a built in light. For a bit more, you can even get a traditional style microscope that can take photos.
Once your child gets started photographing the very small, you may be amazed at what they will notice. You may end up with themes photo projects of everything from a bug or blade of grass to an ultra-closeup of the dog’s nose. A fun game to play is the “What is this a picture of?” game. You and your child could take photos of the very large or very small at interesting angles or in abstract ways and see if you can guess what the fun photo is picturing. It is a fun game that encourages critical thinking, creativity and can make for lots of laughs.
Be creative and you can show your child that a camera can do much more than take selfies. You can encourage your child’s creativity and intellectual development and make lots of good memories along the way with these best photo projects!
My daughter just loves her camera and all she can do (she’s in film school and also loves the big film cameras !!)
We love scrapbooking our photos! Such beautiful gifts.
I love the idea! A good way to keep them busy for the summer while having fun!
Kids love taking pictures nowadays and it’s nice to actually do something with them instead of them just sitting on a memory card.
I don’t think I’d have trusted my kids with an expensive camera maybe if they were in their mid teens, then they would have more appreciation of the need to be careful with mum’s camera.
Love the photo gift idea. Great for Christmas presents!
This is an awesome idea for the kids, I used to buy my girls the disposable cameras all the time and let them take pictures of what they wanted, and they got to make their own albums!
Our 9 yr old is just getting into taking pics. It started with selfies but now she just loves taking pics of anything!! Great hobbie 🙂
Photography is a great hobby for kids!!
Luckily good cameras have gotton much more affordable too!!
Yes, and the quality of the images are so better too!
All great activities to do with your child! Love capturing these years with my camera!
My kids have recently shown an interest in photography and I would like to support it! Thanks for the ideas!
I think photography would be a great hobby for a kid especially if their interest ends up being a career
I think it is just lovely that this post promotes being creative with photography; my family and I do greatly enjoy photography, as well as the brilliant, clean humour that can come from a rightly-timed meme!