by Hobbies are a great way to have fun in your spare time and get away from the typical grind of responosible life. But your new hobby can have benefits beyond just killing time and helping you unwind. Why not take up a hobby that’ll learn you a thing or two?
Here are five great educational hobbies you can take up today, either for yourself or to introduce your child to fun learning activities.
Board Games
If you’re looking for something that is addictive and educational, then board games are just what you need. There are a wide variety of board games to choose from, like your classics, Monopoly and Chess, to modern cutting-edge games like Village or Pandemic. Board games are fun and engaging activities for children and adults with enough variety that you can find something perfect for anyone.
A good board game teaches you powerful critical thinking skills and helps you strategize better, teaching you to think ahead and plan accordingly. Plus they’re hours of fun and great social games too!
Children love board games too, which means you can start them out learning important concepts like resource and money management, math and more. There are even several great word and spelling based games such as Scrabble or Letter Tycoon.
But board games aren’t just for kids. Adults can benefit from the mental stimulation too, though you might want to pick up something harder than Chutes and Ladders.
Blogging
Blogging is a really intriguing hobby that I personally enjoy very much. I find that it’s excellent for stress relief, but it’s also a great hobby to expand the mind. Research is an important part of being a good blogger, so while you find interesting topics to write about, you’ll find yourself digging deeper and deeper into them in order to make sure your posts are insightful and accurate.
It also helps you develop great language skills which can benefit you professionally as well. While you might not make a great living blogging, you might find that the exercise of honing your words and coming up with new ways of expressing yourself and exploring ideas helps you communicate better in professional settings. Depending on how you go about blogging, you might also develop your social skills by playing around with ways to entertain your readers and keep people engaged in what you have to say.
These days there are also worthwhile technical skills you can develop through maintaining a blog since you’ll want to figure out how to get your words up online where others can read them. While you could certainly stick to a simple platform such as Medium that does everything for you, you might enjoy the flexibility and customization that comes with a more robust content management system (CMS) such as WordPress. Learning these basic Internet skills can come in handy in a variety of careers, particularly given how much is done online these days.
Learning a Language
Being multilingual is becoming more and more valuable in our ever-connected world. Learning a new language might not seem like much of a hobby, but lots of people enjoy it and it can be more effective than taking a language course since taking it up as a hobby takes the pressure off. You get to set the goal and timeline.
Plus you can combine it with a much more fun hobby: travel! When you visit places around the world, don’t just go as an English-speaking tourist. Show up ready to immerse yourself in the language and communicate with the locals in their native tongue.
While being fluent in a new language would be awesome, that doesn’t have to be your goal. You might find it fun to simply learn how to count to 10 in another language, or learn some basic greetings in several languages. Even having a few phrases up your sleeve can be useful when you travel or meet someone who speaks the language,
You’ll find there are several great mental benefits from taking up a new language. Language is very sophisticated and has unique connections in the brain to deal with it. Expanding these connections can boost your overall acuity in amazing ways, and new languages can give you new ways of looking at and understanding the world around you.
Programming
Not long ago, programming was perceived as an odd hobby reserved for introverted geeks who love spending time in the basement. Over time, coding has become one of the most important activities and career skills anyone can possess. As we come to depend more and more on technology, those of us with programming skills are becoming some of the most sought after professionals in nearly any industry.
Besides being a lucrative activity, programming is fun and fulfilling. If you are a practical person who loves creating things from scratch or merely solving problems, programming can be an addictive hobby for you. What’s even better is the fact that it improves problem solving, focus and memory skills.
There are also a variety of programming languages and tools out there for any level of coder. So how deep you want to go is entirely up to you. While technology is getting more and more complex, the tools unlocked by that advancement are making it easier than ever to get into coding.
Playing an Instrument
Music is a lot like language, and learning to play music can have a lot of the same benefits for your mind as learning a new language. Playing music can help you flex your creativity and memory while also providing a nice, relaxing outlet for you.
Musical training has been shown to positively affect people’s brain health by helping prevent dementia and improving long-term memory. There can also be important social elements to playing an instrument since jamming out with friends is a lot of the fun. For kids, they could have the opportunity to join their school’s orchestra or marching band where they’ll certainly develop some great, long-lasting friendships with other musically-inclined children.
Of course, playing an instrument isn’t a simple hobby to get into. It can be difficult to learn a new instrument though there are many classes available free on YouTube. There are also hefty costs associated in many cases, depending on the instrument. For example, a decent trombone could run you $150.
Still it’s a worthwhile investment. Aside from the mental benefits, music is an enjoyable hobby and a wonderful talent to be able to show off for friends and family.
