Summer holidays not going away

[Totallyfrazzledmum]

Starting to feel stressed about the summer holidays, we cannot afford to go away anywhere and looking for ideas but most day trips look super expensive. 3 primary age children who are very demanding :(

Legoland?
Yes if they are used to that level of holiday entertainment you can't make them happy.

They are lucky to do 3 clubs. A lot of parents can't afford that and kids are left with grandparents.

Ask around if you can borrow camping gear.

We often have friends and family using ours. We are a family of scouts and have a lot.
But I do realise it's not that fancy. But it can be great fun to explore a more basic life style and learn to set up a tent, to cook on a gas stove or a fire.

Nature for primary school children is quite exciting if you choose a lokation next to a forest or the sea. You can go for great walks and spend time together.

Btw we can't afford Legoland either. We have never been there.

Go to as many free or cheap local events as possible. Take picnics or eat at home, food out is generally overpriced, poor quality and at the end of a long queue. Or possibly compromise with supermarket meal deals or their cafes often do kids eat free type deals.

Look to see where you can go cheaply on public transport. From Hertfordshire I would have thought you could get to London quite cheaply so go to the museums, big parks, just wander around for the day. If you go on the train, places like London Zoo do 2 for 1 entry, its a National Rail scheme so look into that.

You're far from the beach but there will probably be (organised) lakes where you can swim and spend the day for relatively low cost.

Do you have anything you can sell to raise money? My village is running a table top sale in early July, good for a clear out and bring some money in.

Unless your credit rating is awful, you could change your bank account a couple of times in the next month or so and possibly bring in £3/400.

Review your budget. With 3 DC and no benefits, your income is probably decent so could it be that reducing your spending in other areas will free up money for school holiday entertainment?

Could you stretch to a night or two in a youth hostel or Travelodge? Many are in coastal areas.

Also look at Moneysavingexpert.com and Days out with the kids. Both have big features on how to entertain DC cheaply in the holidays.

OK, so you need to change your mindset. Legoland is a once per year treat, not something that might be considered as every day.

Mentally think about your local area with primary school children eyes. When mine were that age we literally went on a walk or cycle with a picnic to a playground with a ball/other toys and camped out there for several hours. if play dates are difficult then this is also an opportunity to meet other children.

Once you've exhausted local (and remember your DC might be very happy to go to the same place every day) then travel a bit further afield. Then I put toys out in rotation for the afternoon. We always had basic craft items.

If you need to, "sell" the ideas to your children as exploring or den building, or imaginative. Don't just say "we're going to the park down the road".

I also scoured the internet for free or cheap community events. The library is a good one. We also have various community groups that run events in local parks.

They are lucky to do 3 clubs. A lot of parents can't afford that and kids are left with grandparents.

Personally I wish we were "lucky" enough to have extended family that would look after our children and didn't have to pay out in clubs, but this is a nice example of how the same thing can be viewed in different eyes.

A lot of grandparents around here do holidays care and it's not expensive or exciting days out so OP children would be very disappointed.

Plan but the holiday on an A3 sheet. Get the kids to chose activities for each week.

Batch make cheese rolls and some sort of cup cake and freeze them for the week of packed lunches. Get a thermos flask and either put cold squash or hot chocolate in cold days.

Consider buying an OS map so you can explore local footpaths. Do scavenger hunts. Den building in the woods and a long walk once a week

Have a craft day once a week, look on You tube for cheap and easy crafts e.g. milk bottle bird feeders or something like that.

Have a town day once a week, visit the library and museum in different nearby towns.

Plan in one or two beach trips across the summer. Consider looking for cheap premier in family rooms to make an overnight trip somewhere. Bristol is good for kids with the Aquarium and We the Curious. Or travel into London for all the amazing free museums there.

Do you have bikes? That can be a whole day activity and pretty cheap.

We also did one national trust place per week with packed lunch.

@Totallyfrazzledmum, have you gained anything from multiple great ideas here?

Also in herts.

Depending on which bit you’re in, look for local farm park summer passes. We often do something like Mead Open Farm, which last summer was £30ish pp for a summer passes. DS has never got tired of that, there’s a soft play if the weather is bad, but generally they can run riot with lots of added holiday activities the site runs and a packed lunch. Then for the price of 1x Legoland trip, you’ve got a good set of days out.

Also - for the price of a train ticket (if you go from somewhere like Watford where under 11s go free) you have access to ALL the great, free museums and parks in London. We love Natural History/Science Museums followed by a walk across the park to Princess Diana Playground. If you don’t like manoeuvring through central/the underground, Greenwich for the Maritime Museum is a straight shot on the train from St Albans. Appreciate costs can add up but I’ve always been quite firm that the museum/day out IS the treat, and bring packed lunches/skip the gift shop.

National Trust normally have lots of holiday activities - quite a few near us you’d only pay for parking and there’s stuff going on. Same for local parks.

For a family with primary school DC, National Trust membership is excellent value if you have even a couple of places nearby. £15 a month gets you free entry, free parking and access to the play areas, woodland walks, activities, events, all sorts. I think a lot of people overlook it because they assume it's all about wandering around a historical house while praying that your DC don't knock over the priceless artifacts, but most places are worth a visit even if you don't go inside any of the properties.

Making a mental note to avoid ikea in August!

My children were given enough for a pocket money toy and we'd go to Hamleys where they would have lots of toys/games on demo. Followed by a burger of some sort. Look at train journeys near you. Museums. Pack lunch, picnic in the park.

We had an old tent in the garden when little. Our friends would come round and we would play 'house', making jam sandwiches and eating in the tent. Then lots of creative play, we had neither a car or money growing up but played all day. Children seem to expect so much entertainment now or just sit gaming. Its quite sad.

I'm in a similar situation. If the dc moan then I give them a budget and get them researching cheap days out themselves. I find going to a new park is good fun. Also if you get involved in whatever they are doing then they enjoy it more. It's hard though. Mine are aged 12-20 and they would rather be on screens all day but if I let them do that they would be up all night.

You don't say where you are in Hertfordshire but cinema in Letchworth does cheap kids tickets 1.75 each weekends..book in advance. The openair pool there is £4 for a kids swim. Morning and afternoon sessions. Also one in hitchin.

Join the summer reading challenge at a library. My library also offers games, jigsaws to take home, crafts and free films.(Central bedfordshire if you are close)

Walking, picnics, Hertfordshire has some lovely countryside! Dunstable downs is close ..make a kite, fly a kite! . Walking by the canal watching narrowboats.

Explore your area..I bet you find things you never knew existed!

Guys, don’t forget the government’s ’Great British Summer Savings’!

https://costoflivinghelp.campaign.gov.uk/summer-savings/?gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23869206373&gbraid=0AAAABCrP8yvCqeR8goGCZaH-JSQ8xJkSF

So if you have holiday camp booked for 3 weeks, they will have quite full on, active days for half of the holidays and you’ll have probably paid quite a large chunk out already. One thing I’ve found is that it is actually a bit easier to mix and match weeks with clubs and home but it does mean you don’t get a solid week off. Eg instead of 3 full weeks of camp, do 3 days of camp, 2 days off work and then have a long weekend. I find that mine are often quite tired after camp so more amenable to a chill day at home.

What is your budget for the remaining 3 weeks?

Print or draw out a grid for the whole holidays.

Colour code or white in the weeks they are in childcare.

Get suggestions of things they would like to do and draw up a lost.

Suggest some fun challenges/activities to them:

• reading challenge at the library
• apply for a blue peter badge
• litter pick in local area (lots of parish councils etc have the pickers you can borrow)
• go for a bike/scooter ride for x km
• visit x number of new parks and maybe review them for a local fb group
• go to an outdoor splash park (free) or lido (paid)
• take bikes or scooters to a different pump track or skate park
• visit a local museum or monument
• geocache
• try a parkrun or junior parkrun, run or volunteer
• see if you can arrange to help a neighbour walk their dog or care forntheir animals (pur neighbours had chickens and let us collect the eggs)
• use the os map to find new footpaths near you and explore a new route.
• use fitness watches or apps to try to do x number of steps over x weeks
• if they do cubs or brownies look at working towards some badges
• look into the history of place names of where you live
• do a family history project. Look at old photos or draw a family tree or interview older relatives.
• wrote to relatives with news and post them letters/cards or postcards
• have a big sort out at home. Go through all drawers, toys, books and clothes and choose 10 things to give to the charity shop each.
• find a local stream or river. Take sieves and jars and fish for a bit.
• walk in a local wood with the Merlin app

Then write in your ideas in the grid.

There is so much you can do!

When I was a kid in the 70s, my Mum got me and my siblings to write down what we wanted to do over the summer holidays on a handdrawn calendar. The only caveat was that it had to be free. As we were choosing we were a lot less whingey about any of it.

Sometimes it took a bit of imagination as one of us said we wanted to go fishing and we basically walked to a wet ditch and looked for creatures (no fish) and took sandwiches with us. However, I remember it being fun.

This was all anchored around certain things like going into the garden to play, some reading or drawing before tea, going to the local park. That kind of thing. When it was wet we still went out.

Children do need to learn to entertain themselves. Otherwise they will grow up expecting others to organise things for them all the time.

museum
library
picnics
parks
walks
bike rides
mystery trip in the car with a sandwich
cinema on a special deal

that would be a great summer holiday.

Some brilliant ideas here, has anything sounded feasible OP? There's definitely a lot more for younger children and more of the ideas and free library activities and free kids events tend to be aimed at the under 8's so it would be useful to know your kids ages. We live on a tight budget and I've found as they've got older asking the kids what they wanted to do in the school holidays has worked well and surprised me with things I'd never had thought of, the last holiday my 9 year old wanted to see some penguins, redecorate her room and visit a castle and my teens wanted to sleep, watch a few films at the cinema, learn how to make homemade pasta and how to crochet. Totally different to the thoughts of expensive theme parks I'd been thinking about. Learning new hobbies have gone down really well and we often start our summer holiday with how-to books from the library and a trip to hobby craft.

Last year I made a jar with activities written on bits of paper and whenever the kids were bored they pulled something out.

It was always stuff we already had - make a birthday cake out of play doh, do a Joe wicks workout, look through the cook books and find meals you want to make, do one of the craft kits that has been sat untouched since Christmas etc.

Granted it doesn’t fill 6 weeks but I found it useful for filling and hour or so each day.

I also remember as a kid during the summer hols my auntie made a list of all the playgrounds that were within a reasonable drive away and it was our challenge to visit every one by the end of the summer. Some of them were rubbish but it was still fun to try out somewhere new and tick it off our list.

If I remember later OP I’ll send you a list of things to do in Herts that I put together when my kids were little. I well remember that pressure to do things.

outdoor swimming in Hertfordshire

https://smudgedpostcard.com/outdoor-swimming-hertfordshire/

there’ll be a Facebook group if you search as well (there always is) and some places will be shallow and not really swimming suitable but more splashing about suitable.