Do you want to become the goofy, funny, awesome dad your kids will tell their friends about? If so, keep reading.

There are lots of ways you can be a great dad, but playing with your kids in public and at home is one of the best. Your children are playful, creative, and so are you. To create a strong bond with them, playing games is a great way. Not only will you improve their emotional connection, you’ll also increase their trust and love for you.

So, here are a ton of tips to make you into the silly dad you’ve always wanted to be. These silly, hilarious, moments are a great way to build memories that will last until years to come.

Play, Don’t Just Tell Your Children To Go Play

When you go to the playground, don’t just send them off to play by themselves. Join in! Go down the slide, play in the sand, swing on any swing available. While you don’t need to participate every time you go to the playground, it’s a really good experience to actively have fun with your children. You might want to pretend like you’re struggling on the monkey bars and fall in a clumsy way. Or, create pretend situations, like pirates or race cars or unicorns. All of these activities can boost your child’s creativity and cement you as the-most-awesome-dad-ever.

Jump In The pool

When taking your children swimming, you’ll want to actually get in the pool. Dive deep and do headstands, as long as your children can supervise themselves. Play water games, practice swimming, and just laugh and shout and have fun. Your children want you to be involved. Your enjoyment increases their enjoyment. So, get in there, and don’t worry about anyone watching. It’s just you and your children.

Be Active

Do more than just walk with your children, play sports. Whether or not you’re good at sports, you can show them how to shoot, throw, kick, catch, or dribble. If you’re very bad, you can pretend that you’re not. If your children are of a certain age, i.e. young, they won’t know if you’re bad or not. And, if your children are of an older age, they can show you their moves and increase your skills. While you’re playing with your children, start conversations. Ask questions and listen to their answers. During these activities, give your children your undivided attention. Put away any distractions. This shows your children you value them and believe they’re precious.

Some other activities include roughhousing, making a monkey pile, tickling, raspberries, piggy-back rides, bouncing and tossing your children, and racing. With a few of these activities you’ll want to switch roles, for instance, let your children tickle you or let them show you how to do a cartwheel. If you pretend that you don’t know how to do an activity, your children will feel very proud of themselves because they are teaching daddy.

Coach

Your child’s first experience of sports can be through you, as their coach. You can show them how to throw a frisbee, football, or how to play dodgeball. With all of your years of experience playing these games and having fun, they’ll love that their dad is showing them these super fun sports. Grab some rackets and play tennis or put up a net and show your children how to play volleyball. Teach them different ways to throw the ball or the frisbee such as overhead or forehand. When playing tennis, if they’re of a certain age, teach them some of the rules.

Create An Environment Of Work And Play

Chores can be a dull experience. Add some fun to it! A great way to add fun to mandatory activities is to put on some music. You’ll want to crank upbeat music that your entire family can dance to or bounce to or sing along to. This will add a nice rhythm to the work and make it go faster. Blast the music and enjoy everyone’s singing, though the words be wrong, as they complete these tasks.

You can also make chores a race to see which one of your family members can get the tasks done fastest. Set a timer and when it goes off, hand out awards. You can also have family members do similar activities and race each other.

When you’re cleaning the bathroom or washing your car, have some water fights. This is a great way to associate needed tasks with fun. As your children get older, rather than thinking these activities are boring, they’ll remember these fun times they had with their entire family.

Errands

When doing activities such as shopping or getting a haircut, you can make this a lot more fun in a variety of ways. For instance, you can race to the building or move the shopping cart from side to side and pretend it’s a race car. You can have your children stand on the back or the front of the cart and push it quickly towards the building. Another great way to add fun during shopping is to allow your children to push the cart. If they are young, guide the cart, but if they are older this will help them feel responsible and important. A great game to get your children involved in the actual collecting of items, is I, Spy. You can say, “I spy a white can with green vegetables” and watch as your children sprint to retrieve the can.

For haircuts, you can pretend the clippers are a lawnmower, removing hair in clean lines.

Contests

An activity that is really fun is the silliest face contest. Your children compete against each other, and you, to see who can make the silliest faces. You can also have laughing, avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk, and farting and burping contests. Children are quite competitive and they’ll join in the fun as soon as you introduce the topic. You can also ask your children what contest they would like to run and see what interests them.

These are just a few of the ways you can become a silly dad and strengthen your bond with your children through play, laughter, and amazing memories they’ll cherish swell into adulthood.