Making One on One Time

How do you make the time to spend quality time with each individual child? With the age gaps of my children, it's not possible to play a game that they all can understand or enjoy. The boys do not like doing the same things the girls do and vice versa. There's only so many hours in the day. By the time we get home from school, it is 4pm. I start to cook dinner around 5ish. That ends up leaving around 2 hours after dinner to try to fit something in. Does anyone have ideas? What do you do with your children in the evenings?

My oldest is 13 and my youngest is 6 so I have big age gap between my two boys. I find I get the best one on one time with my oldest if we are watching sport together, or I'm driving him to his sports. He often will help me cook supper so we have nice chats then. Another thing we like to do is have a family game night and pick a game that everyone can play or have a movie night at home. My youngest always gets one on one time with myself or my husband at bed time. We read books, watch a show together or watch hockey. Another time we spend together is of course doing homework. I try not to make homework time a crazy time and we make it fun if possible.

I do not have a big gap between my two children. There is only 15 months between them but even so with one girl and one boy they do not always want to play the same game or watch the same movie. Being a single parent also makes it hard to get some one on one time with each of them. I sometimes get my daughter to help me with dinner or we will do a special project. My son and I will sometimes do other things together. We have a show that we like to watch and make fun of it together because sometimes it is a little ridiculous. I think because the times that we get to have mother/daughter or mother/son time is infrequent it makes it that much more special and memorable.