Summer holidays - how many days do you “do nothing”?!

[Wingingit11]

As above really.

How many days eg a week do your kids potter around the house without seeing others /doing any proper activity ?

We've planned 1 or 2 things a week rest of the time its at home playing with toys, watching tv/films, drawing/colouring, play in the garden/paddling pool, bikes/scooters etc. We have a dog, so dog walk each day anyway.

It's interesting to see.

Mine will do that sort of thing for a few hours at a time but they do a lot better if I have taken them out for at least an hour's run around first. A whole day is a real struggle at home, I have tried and given up and taken them out after lunch 😄

Every second day. Although some days we'll go for a stroll along the beach in the evening if I've been busy during the day. When they were little I'd get them out most days as they weren't able to entertain themselves as well. They're all over 10 now so some days my teens will be out with friends, other days we'll do something together. 10 year old is always with me as she's disabled.
We'll try and do one official day out a week like the zoo or a theme park and the other days will be a dog walk or shopping type trip.

Yes loads nothing wrong with pottering !

If we're not on holiday, most of them. Mama needs to work.

Wow! 😮 🤨

This week we've been out once, going out tomorrow afternoon and again on the weekend. Next week we have a fair few appointments so will be dotted around with house days chilling.
Then two weeks be busy with family every day.
Then back to relaxing dotted with a few days out. I think it's important not to over load them and let them have time at home.

My kids are happy ones playing with his toys and the other is gaming happily while I read a book and surf mumsnet

Also depends on the weather it's been Balatic here this week!

Wow, where do you live that your streets are teeming with feral kids? Or what was it you called them....disadvantaged? Can you hear yourself??😂😂😂

At least half the week. We live very totally tho so they usually spend time outdoors if it's not raining

If we are not going out they often have friends over instead and mess about

We’ve got 4 days this holiday where the kids are entertaining themselves and even then we’ll probably go swimming or for a long walk after work on those days. The rest we go out, go on holiday or they go to holiday clubs. Mine end up fighting or on screens all day if we don’t do something, but perhaps that is just their lower middle class angst showing.

We try and get out a couple of times a week but we have plenty of days indoors too. I think it’s a good thing for kids to get bored and find things to entertain themselves. And mine are only 7 and 3 so not old enough to stay in bedrooms on computers. We use the garden a lot, baking and the eldest likes drawing, youngest likes tv 🤦🏼‍♀️ But we have a large portion of the day with no screen, pop music on and have a disco! And once husband comes home we have family time before bed so either take them to the park, go for a walk or play games.

I find this tricky. I'm in work 3 days a week. They will be at clubs/grandparents those days and nights. Their dad's 1 day. So we have 2 weekdays and a weekend day together each week. Often they will want to stay at home but can get crabby with each other, so I would do a morning out then chill in the afternoons. The morning out could be park, swimming, library. Nothing amazing!

For us chilling means playing with toys, reading books, playing in the garden (and eating all the berries and currants that grow there), and a bit of screen time (not unrestricted though, they get 2 hours, split into half hour blocks for my youngest).

Most days are like this! Or at least half. We do have a dog that needs walking though so do that at least.

our plan this week-
Monday- Spiderman at the cinema
Tuesday- event at an English heritage site and then swimming lesson
today- chilling at home, family came round for lunch
Thursday- swimming and macdonalds
Friday- granny’s house
Saturday- Friend coming round
Sunday- birthday party

So relatively chill but no days when nothing is happening

Quite a lot of our holidays are unplanned.DH and I take turns to work. We live rurally and have a big garden that backs onto some woodland. If it’s not raining my kids love playing outside. Even when it is raining sometimes too. They have a den they’ve made in the woods, look for toads and bugs, play on the trampoline and probably all kinds of random stuff. They also play with neighbours kids. They also play inside with toys and crafts and watch screens too.

We try to get out for a walk or something most days though as they do start fighting after a bit. Doesn’t help these holidays have been so wet so far (Scotland so several weeks in!)

We have 8 weeks off this summer and honestly 5 days out of 7 my DD is pottering at home, she loves it.

DS teen loves his sports so basically doing what he does on a college day but without college. Monday swimming, club cricket nets session, Tuesday Karate, 1-1 cricket coaching, Wednesday cricket training lunch time and Crav Magar evening, swimming in morning then club cricket practice/17 match, Friday swimming in morning or at a friend's house evening cricket practice in nets. Saturday cricket match, Sunday cricket match also one 17 game each week but on different days. In between times we do a BBQ in our garden and invite his friends over for a couple of hours. We make home made pizzas and again he will invite some friends over. He will also go to the cinema a couple of times over summer and go to visit MiL who lives by the coast for 4 or 5 days so then he will swim in the sea and body board. He'll go bowling a couple of times with his friends and last week he met up with some of his old school friends for a McDonalds. He's meeting them again later this week too. He's very chilled and his best friends are playing cricket in the nets with him. He'll have a 1-1 cricket session each week over the summer and probably run around the lake near to where we live he'll also takes our dogs around the lake for a walk some mornings too. He was offered a two week holiday in France but he refuses to miss his cricket matches and it's only such a short seasonal game that we indulge him and DH and I are off on holiday at the end of October when he is off playing cricket in Dubai with his club.

When they were younger we did maybe 2/3 things a week and the other days we'd be home but rarely 'just us' as they'd either have friends round, or more likely, they'd be playing with the kids in the street.

I think a mix of the two, we will only do a few big days out, and we have plenty of unscheduled days at home but most of those involve park, swimming, play date etc (all within walking distance). They will also do a few days of camp each but not much as I’m not working and they are expensive. The kids will play and entertain themselves for a while at home and love it if I play board games etc but if it was totally unstructured they would both spend too much time on screens (especially the 11 year old)!

For me, the holidays are the time to get out and do fun things. I don’t want to just hang around at home, and I like to get out most days. I do the same at the weekend. I can’t imagine just doing nothing at home, id be pretty bored.
So we’ve just come back from 2 weeks holiday and this week we:
Monday - trip to Portsmouth docks
Tuesday - visited a national trust house, had a walk inside and out
Today - played sport and ran some errands.

Within this, we have plenty of time at home as well - our longest “out” day was Monday and we left the house at 10 and got back at 5, so still had hours for them to play in the garden or whatever.

For the rest of the week we have a trip to an activity tomorrow and Friday we are meeting friends at ah attraction.

Everyone’s different though and my boys are a little older (10 and 13) so I feel like I want to make the most of the time they actually want to spend time and do things with me!

Mine never ‘played out’ as we live on a main road - where I grew up on an army estate it was a lot safer, slow roads and lots of green space. We don’t have that where we are. They were always allowed friends round to play and are lucky to have a really big garden too so they did that instead of playing out.
I do feel it’s a bit of a shame for them as we developed all kinds of skills playing out which my kids don’t have or took them longer to learn.

But those of you saying your 5, 7,11 year olds just play with toys and with each other and do handstands - that is with a supervising adult available, right? Yes it's easy with me not working and being at home, they play for half an hour, come and ask for screens, I redirect them, we plan to go to park, gradually get ready, etc etc. But to my mind that is me, doing childcare.

Are there really those among you with primary school children who are WFH and are not having to constantly supervise? And if so how do you do it? That is what I would love to know.

Every day we go out and meet up with friends. However, they get 2-3 hours of screen time before we go and another 2-3 when we get back.