To start a thread on tips to keep kids entertained during 6-week school holidays?

[twinkledag]

Thought it might be a good idea to collate people's ideas in one place?

activity bins. there are loads of ideas of ones to make here, and you can just pull them out when you need things to do.

obviously you need to watch them, but run a lukewarm bath, and put things like a sieve and a couple of sponges in there, and a few bath toys if you have them. the dc get clean and it keeps them entertained.

We will probably do a couple of Treasure Trails. We're working through the local ones as we tend to keep and re-do them when we have visitors. Our oldest can be bribed to keep the answers secret.

We have National Trust membership, so tend to keep an eye on their kids activities, as well as activities at the library or local museums. These are usually free or cheap.

DD has a Blue Peter badge (very easy to get you just need to follow the instructions on the Blue Peter website). It gets her in free to a fair number of places, so we only have to pay for the adult ticket.

We have a camping holiday booked for 8 days. A friend used to holiday at Youth Hostels, they do family rooms now (she's a single parent to two kids). We got our tent plus a load of camping equipment on eBay from a family who had moved on from camping. All well looked after stuff, just that they'd bought a caravan

We'll also look at using our Tesco vouchers for a day out or two.

Local libraries here tend to have holiday activities for free or a minimal cost. Sports centres do too (and our local park has free sporting activities).

It's also worth having a look at Hobbycraft for artistic activities, garden centres and Pets at Home.

With older cooking, getting them to plan and prepare a meal for the family is a good one. Mine have found the recipe from cookery books / online, helped me shop for it (strangely they never offer to pay ) and made a meal. Ok it's more stressful than cooking myself but you have to start somewhere !!

*older children

How old are the kids?

No, YANBU, obviously. So why post here?

How old? Infant school children are cheaper different to primary and younger secondary kids.

I like to set topics/themes for each week - so eg one week our theme is under the sea, we will get library books about fish, go to an aquarium, have a lot of baths with toy fish and sharks, do painting/stamping/collages of fish, learn a song about fish, bake fish shape biscuits etc etc. So it’s all stuff we might do anyway but it gives me a prompt for ideas each week. You can look on Pinterest for craft ideas for your theme.

This year the themes are Space, Under the Sea, France, Diggers (we are going to diggerland that week), Dinosaurs and one week left blank for our holiday.

I'd be very grateful for any ideas for a 9 year old and an 11 year old. The 9 year old is still happy with the national trust kids trails etc, but the 11 year old not so much!

I’m making a calendar of local events. Summer fayres, craft mornings at library, events in parks etc.
Doesn’t mean we’ll get round them all but at least if the kids are whining they’re bored I have some ideas ready.

Local soft play has an offer for a summer pass for July and August.
Get numbers from parents now so you can arrange play dates over the holidays.

Depending on the ages of kids would they be interested in doing a summer long “project”? Planning on doing a scrapbook with pictures the kids have drawn and add ticket stubs etc.

Some places charge you for admission once and then allow you entry for a year. Space Centre in Leicester and Milton Keynes museum are two I know of who do this.

Any ideas for dd4 and dts2 would be great. I'm dreading 6 whole weeks after the weekend I've just had with them.

I love the idea of a previous posters of having themed weeks, that sounds great 👍🏻

My DC are unfortunately too old for any activities anymore but I used to make an activity jar every summer.
On the days when we had nothing to do they would take it in turns to pick something from the jar. This just involved a few hours on Pinterest looking at summer bucket list ideas/rainy day activities/vacation activities etc writing them onto little slips of paper and then rolling/folding them up and putting them in the jar.
You can make the jar and slips as simple/decorated as you like.
It’s a real lifesaver when the dreaded “I’m bored” is uttered

Move house. The logistics of that is filling at least half of our Summer break!

Look at the websites for every park, museum, place of interest in your area, even if they seem uninteresting/not a place you would think of going. They may have workshops/exhibitions etc for children. I found a pottery workshop at a Roman Villa at Easter for example... The kids that attended were toddlers up to Secondary school age. The children got to handle some of the artefacts as well. I always forget the Villa is there, it's tucked behind the train station.

Library summer reading challenge, it's space themed this year. Libraries also will have some activities as well.
Our local leisure centre has offers for their badminton courts, table tennis etc.

If we're not going away, we have a plan to go in a bigger outing every weekend of the hols. So a castle, a country show, a trip to the expensive cinema, that kind of thing. Then we have a stash of rainy day activities for the weekdays. Swimming, a movie and duvet day, board games, that kind of thing. Then I collate the stuff going on locally. If the weather is nice we get the paddling pool out, we might spend a day or two on the veg patch, we might have a day cooking something new together. We have a couple of free days for mooching about the house doing whatever they want, lego, gaming, getting all of the playmobil out and building a massive town.

We also have a uniform shopping day and a cleaning out the bedrooms day. Dull but essential. And a day or two with the grandparents so I can do some housework.

It goes pretty quickly actually!

To the PP - I know IANBU but I didn't know the best place to put this thread without it getting deleted. Any ideas? 😊

Love the themed week idea! And I like the calendar idea.

My idea is that theatres in London are doing free kids tickets - https://www.culturewhisper.com/r/kids/kidsweekkkidsgoofreetoolondonshows/5027

DS is 4 so this is my first 6-week holidays with him.

When my two were younger we had an arrangement with parents in their classes that every Tuesday morning/lunchtime there would be a meet up in the local park for a play and picnic. Not everyone went all the time due to holidays and other activities but very useful if you and/or children wanted company. The new Reception starters were also invited so they could get to know families before starting school.

I tend to try and get them to play outside as much as possible - dd in particular is much much better at occupying herself outdoors than indoors!

Ideas :

Walkie talkies - can role play or better lay hide and seek etc
Scooter / bike wash with sponges and brushes etc
Dolls - dd likes to sit outside with a bowl of water and wash all their hair. Only do it on hot days tho so they can lie in the sun and dry!
Chalk drawing on pavements etc
Trampoline, football goals and table tennis in our garden are all well used!
Baking - truffles are a favourite here
Movies - dd never that keen to sit still but popcorn and cuddling up helps!
My kids love board games. Me not so much.
Cardboard boxes and loads of glue / crafts etc and let their imagination run wild!
Geocaching
Free museums
Workshops - eg local sewing shop here runs craft classes for kids
Meet with friends ! Lifesaver!

Also could you have a “swap day” with another parent that you trust? They have your kids you have theirs?
I’ve no doubt that mine would behave better for friends mum than me.

I usually book in a few workshops at local craft centres, look for free library events, a few days at the beach, I usually have one or two annual passes and the summer I make good use of them. I'll also have a few science experiments to do at home (old film tubes with alka seltzer was the best), Hama beads (DS isn't really crafty but I looked up Mario characters we could make out of hama beads and that caught his imagination). Various other craft activities (e.g. we made an ancient scroll with a treasure map). Occasionally I'll set up a treasure hunt (I looked up clues online) and at the end is a little treat. We definitely did the summer reading challenge at the library and kept a journal and decorated it.

With a little effort involved you can make activity days for kids as young as four :) So last year when my DS was four (almost 5) we did Ninja Adventure Day! Where his favourite stuffy brought a letter from the Emperor to tell him bandits had stolen his treasure and Chief Ninja DS must find it and bring it back! We took his little kick bike and the trail lead us to the forest where he had to look for Bandits and scare them off by shouting, he had to collect a certain number of flowers to make an invisibility potion which he stirred up in a cup with water, we followed the bandit trail to a local playground/park (with the toy owl bringing new missives from the Emperor every now and then with fresh clues). At the park he had to do some challenges on the equipment, then we had to rush back (for little sister's nap) to build a pagoda (out of blankets) in order to host the Emperor's Important Guests (more plush toys) for lunch, then he had to build a lego plane to conduct more surveillance and do a ninja assault course in the garden (I'd tied some red wool around the laundry drying horse as a laser course he had to climb through). After that the owl brought a missive from the Bandits announcing their surrender and informing the Chief Ninja DS that the treasure was hidden in the strawberry patch :D There he found a box with some edible treats in it. He was PSYCHED!

Took a whole day too and was pretty easy to put together! Planning something similar for this year..

Scavenger hunts are also a massive day long hit. You can get pre-made lists online with pictures instead of words so your DC can do it themselves and check off each find with a pencil. Keeps them busy!

We do food challenges eg one summer we tried a different kind of cheese every few days eg Edam, Gouda, Swiss

Get a roll of wallpaper, get them to lie down trace around them and get them to paint themselves life size.

Get outside every day. A walk can be made more interesting by playing a word game as you go. Eg I spy, I went shopping

Swimming

Find out if there is a cheap movie day

Make your own bread or pizza including the dough

Find some chapter books that you think they would all like and read a chapter a day

De clutter their rooms - you can make it fun by playing music, setting a time limit with a timer.

Teach older kids useful skills like sewing on buttons, cleaning the car etc.

Masterchef mystery box for each kid - tailor them to something they can make that is age appropriate eg lemonade, hot fudge sauce

@Damntheman that ninja day is amazing, we will be copying that, thank you.