It’s interesting the debate between being structured/ busy vs down time and pottering. DD is an only and was born in lockdown so perhaps as a hangover from that I went the other way once things started opening up and would fill every day. Sometimes we’d do 2 or 3 groups in a day. She was the kid that would always say ‘what are we doing today’ and wasn’t happy if we didn’t get out for at least some of the day. Probably related - she’s not great at playing independently and never has been really, it’s something we’re still trying to work on and she’s absolutely fine at school or when she was in nursery but at home she very much expects our undivided attention and it’s hard.
Anyway, somewhere around 3.5 she started to resist getting dressed early at the weekends, it got a bit harder to usher her out to the park or the forest or whatever it was. I realised that she really was craving some downtime and we’ve started allowing that far more at the weekends now - she’ll still get up crazy early - usually with DH, and they’ll have breakfast and play with toys for a bit and then we let her have some tv time. I come down and get her to help me with a few jobs - emptying dishwasher or whatever, then we might bake or start to prep some food for later in the day or do some colouring etc. She does have swimming late afternoon on a Saturday but we mostly let the rest of the day just be a pottering day and she definitely seems to need that time now, especially since starting Reception (she’s the youngest in the year and whilst she’s doing great, it’s very tiring for her).
Having said that, here’s some other ideas for stuff to do -
Pets at Home - the classic, and still a firm favourite here. We look at the pets, the fish etc and buy some bird seed for the garden, then nip next door for a drink at the cafe.
Garden Centres - especially fun now and in the lead up to Christmas. Most have a cafe, some have soft plays and a surprising number round here have a cheap train you can sit on to go round the grounds. Google the ones near you and see what they’re like,
Go Outdoors / Millets etc type places - the big superstore ones. Found out recently that one near us has a soft play, but when we had to go to one recently as we wanted to look at bikes, we had ended up killing a good couple of hours there because DD was having a whale of a time exploring all the tents etc set up. I was dragging her away and apologising to the assistant but they told me not to worry about it, all the kids do it and they don’t mind as long as nothing gets broken. DD keeps asking to go back to ‘camping world’
Watch the toddler club on iPlayer and play along with it/ do the activities
Join local Facebook groups, even better if there’s a WhatsApp group for either nursery parents or any group you have attended - honestly I’ve lived here years before having DD and had absolutely no idea how many different activities, groups, places to visit etc there are. I’m in a massive WhatsApp group of local parents (again - started in lockdown when baby groups couldn’t run but has just kept going) - it’s a veritable gold mine of information on what parks are having a Halloween trail or which garden centre has the best Christmas decorations to walk round or when a library the next town over is having a special dinosaur activity day etc. Also look on local council/ government pages for ‘what’s on’ sections, and any local attractions or parks usually have Facebook pages too with events on.
Try other libraries too - they have different stuff/ activities etc. Also, look for any free/ donation only museums nearby or any art galleries etc - again they will often have family days or different activities and stuff on.