Pinterest is a social media image-sharing site that is increasing in popularity. The site allows users to “pin” images to subject-based pin boards the user creates.
It’s helpful to think of each created board as a virtual cabinet to store pinned images accordingly.
Pins can be absolutely any image found on the internet or uploaded by a user.
When someone pins an image, the pin also includes the link. This way, the user can get back to the original site where the image was found within a couple clicks.
Users pin everything from Christmas list ideas to recipes. Yet the site is far, far more useful than that, as many parents have discovered.
Parents and Pinterest
“How can Pinterest help me with my kids?” is what many Pinterest newbies have asked. Then they discover the truth, the phenomenal help that this image–and idea–sharing site can provide.
According to Educational Technology and Mobile Learning, “Pinterest has really revolutionized visual bookmarking” and provides parents with a wealth of inspirational and educational ideas for use at home.
Many parents set up boards for each child as well as individual boards for kid-friendly recipes, school parties, birthday parties, kids’ clothes, kids’ rooms, kids’ crafts, kids’ health, kids’ décor, etc. Each board could contain hundreds of pins that link back to sites with incredibly useful information.
Kids and School
There are lots of teachers using Pinterest to pin worksheets and classroom ideas. Parents can do the same thing and pin books they’d like to read, YouTube videos of narrated stories, online educational films, homework tips, tutoring sites, practice sheets, and crafts.
Many parents pin craft ideas, for instance, for children to make throughout their summer vacation. They might pin educational game ideas or road-trip games for family vacations. Pinterest already contains thousands of useful education-related pins, but users can also pin information that find anywhere on the internet that they want to save to their own boards.
Moreover, there are thousands of ideas for kids of all ages. Parents can simply take time here and there to wade through them, to pin ideas that seem appropriate for their own kids.
Kids and the Kitchen
Pinners have pinned incredibly easy meals for picky kids or kids that require gluten-free diets. Rather than digging through cookbooks or a recipe file, many parents just click on their recipe board to find ideas for dinner all in one handy place.
Pinners also share clever tips like running a popsicle (stick end first) through a cupcake liner to keep the drips from getting all over fingers. It also provides hundreds of ideas for making homemade popsicles.
Kids’ Rooms
Instead of using sticky notes all over your home décor magazines, keep track of ideas on a handy pin board. There are thousands of children’s decorating ideas and hundreds more added each day. Some people think of the site as a perpetual magazine.
Though image-based, users can click on Cinderella carriage bed, for instance, and easily click to its original site to find plans for making it, for instance. Children will also enjoy looking at these decorative ideas with you and finding ideas for things they never even imagined before!
Pinterest and Parenting
Many pins related to parenting offer tips about discipline, chores, homework, etc. Users can pin anything that strikes their fancy in order to keep track of it. A site for age-appropriate chores, for instance, is a popular type of parenting pin.
There are many helpful parenting pins that make Pinterest read rather like a parenting magazine when you search the “kids” category.
Following Others
Pinterest allows you to follow others so you can choose to keep track of your favorite pinner’s pins. You might follow the kids’ teachers or an anonymous teacher with great ideas. You might follow the pins of a great chef who pins hundreds of kids’ meal ideas.
Of course, other pinners might love what you have to pin and decide to keep up with your pins too! No personal information is exchanged and privacy is maintained. There are even private boards where you can pin your Christmas list ideas!
Some pinners have created exceptional Pinterest accounts that you should definitely check out. Parenting.com recently made a list of “people who pin awesome stuff,” stuff that many parents love to pin as well.
If you haven’t discovered Pinterest, it’s time to see what it has to offer. You’ll see a lot, but more importantly, you’ll learn a lot and it might even help make you a better parent–at least a parent with tons of great ideas regarding kids and family.
Keep in mind that Pinterest is a completely customizable experience. You design your own boards, and you can even keep changing them as you children grow and their interests change.
Check the site out to see how it could, indeed, enhance the way you parent in a myriad of ways.
