Entertaining grumpy pre-teen in half term ideas help please !

[KingofCats]

My 10.5 youngest DD is firmly in grumpy pre teen mood. She used to be quite easy to entertain in school holidays, me and her would mooch round town and buy some craft stuff.
she only now wants to watch box sets in her room and poo-poos every activity. She is currently undergoing assessments and has difficulty maintaining friendships. she has 2-3 friends, 1 doesn’t seem to ever want to come for a play date, 1 is away all holiday and 1 DD finds hard work unless there is a structured activity. She seems to be in an awkward age of no longer wanting to play or spend time with me but I can’t let her spend the whole half term in her room on a device.
her older siblings are 14 and 17 and the 14 no longer wants to hang out with her and is in her own teen grump. We did had a successful day a few weeks back where the 17 year old took DD (10) out for the day shopping so I might bribe her to do that again.
added to all this I’m broke and can only afford 1 paid activity like trampolining this half term (which will take up 2 hours maximum even if i drive to the far away one).
She is learning to crochet and likes netball but these activities aren’t helping me work out how the hell to get her out the house this week. She refused to go to netball camp without a friend.
She has meltdowns in busy places like museums. We live 30 mins from London but there’s a 4 day engineering works so no trains on any of my full days off work! Rest of the week I’m doing half days so plan is she watches iPad/chills at home for half day and then I really need to try and get her engaged in a non screen activity.
help - does anyone have ideas ?
i have baking down as one day and maybe planting seeds on another. IF (big IF) i can get her to feel excited about it as she may outright refuse to take part.
this is SUCH a difficult age. My older two weren’t like this at this age, they had lots of friends and interests and enthusiasm for life (and more sibling interaction) but I’m just not finding that with my youngest.
oh and I’ve got a national trust voucher I was thinking of using today but it’s pissing with rain and I know she’ll whinge it’s boring when we get there.

Could you get her interested in a walk or something if she can take arty photos with your phone? Or a recipe she wants and you have to get the ingredients too. YouTube yoga...?

That’s quite a good idea about buying the ingredients as well as cooking to long it out!
I don’t know if she’d be keen on photos on a walk but just remembered geo caching is a thing - never done it but might see if she’d buy into that.

youtube yoga is a great idea!
I think I will do a printable calendar as well and she if she’ll engage with putting her own activity ideas in there….. yoga could be one. Insist there is one “outdoor” activity every day even if it’s just walking to town.

I used to love going to art galleries with my mum at that age. There would usually be an activity based on the works of art on display eg. Details from 20 of the paintings which you had to find & write the title of the painting & name of the artist.

Has she ever tried orienteering? You don't need to join a club - many areas have permanent orienteering courses and all you need to do is print off the course map from your nearest orienteering club website. You also need a compass.

If you dont mind a bit of screen involvement, geocaching is similar - you can download free geocaching apps. Or how about Pokemon Go?

I feel your pain. I was just saying to my DH that all three of our kids (7, 12 & 15) would spend every weekend inside, alone, glued to a screen, if it wasn’t for us. I’m fed up of having to coax, cajol and entertain them. I really thought they’d have a social life of some description once they were older, but sadly it’s not worked out like that.

Things my kids consider a novelty and will willingly participate in:

• getting a McDonald’s breakfast
• going for a drive thru
• cooking a recipe they’ve seen on tiktok
• baking
• going to the cinema
• bingeing box set together
• visiting friends/family (if you’re lucky enough to have any nearby)

I find they are much more likely to engage with an activity if there’s another family involved, so we usually arrange to meet up with another family for a walk, something they’d never want to do if it was just us.

I really miss when they were little and we could pull on our wellies and jump in puddles or sing songs with actions! They are far harder to entertain now!

Film an episode of come dine with me?

You would have to rope in (or bribe) the older ones or invite some others to join.

One of you does the cooking and the others arrive, in costume and in character.

The characters can be anything / one, so a popstar, accountant, obnoxious old person, germ freak, vegan, they don't even have to be human... whatever you feel like.

One person needs to film, or you could put your phone on a tripod.

You can deliberately make the food terrible, if money is tight then just serve cheap bad food, eg grated carrots for a starter.

Each person then has to do the piece to camera and give scores.