Seven weeks summer holidays- what to do?

[twoandahalftimesthree]

It's just dawned on me that dc are off on holiday for seven full weeks this year- how the heck am i going to fill all that time without going completely mad or spending a fortune. Seven blummin weeks!?!
I work for myself so am lucky enough to be flexible over when I work but I do still have to do that work. Maybe I should retrain as a teacher...

Count yourself luck we have 3 months.... I work early in the morning and then in the evening as also work for myself. Dh and I rotate when i have to work during the day. Parks, garden, we are lucky as we live near a beach. We also do homework some days .

DD goes to two different clubs for 3 1/2 weeks, has one week off with me, one with DH and we have a long weekend together. We took our family holiday over Easter this year.

Most of my friends who are either SAHM or can pool overtime/annual leave and take most holidays send their children at least for 1-2 weeks, couple of days each time, to a club to a)give them some time to breath and b)let the children do something as well.

Could you swap children with friends, like you take them one day and they go the next week or similar?

Send them to their grandparents for a week or two? I used to do this when I was still at school and it was the highlight of my summer. My Grandma was something special and not to have to share her with anyone but my sister (and Grandad of course) for a whole two weeks was brilliant...

ds has ADHD and is quite a handful, definitely too much for grandparents for more than a day and he's not really able to access any clubs/activities unless they're specialist ones and we can only ever get a few days over the hols as they're massively oversubscribed. It is an annual challenge! I need ideas to help me through that don't involve medication for me I could do four weeks without a problem but seven is a long, long, long time.

How old are they? Do you have a garden?

I find a paddling pool with water toys and/or garden sprinkler works wonders and ds3 is almost 9! A wee tent, bought or makeshift. Picnic lunches. We had a water slide one year and ended up with all the neighbourhood kids as well. They played for hours but it makes a mess of the grass. In poor weather I'm hopeless.

There is usually some sort of reading Challenge at the libraries. Read a certain number of books, write a brief review and get (small) rewards for doing so. Wouldn't take up huge chunks of time, but it would be something different to do each week.

My DD used to enjoy going fruit picking, if you have any farms etc near you. Again, wouldn't take a great amount of time but would be a fun activity.

It is just me and dd aged 10 for 5 weeks as I work term time only. National Trust membership and helping out at the local animal rescue are both free. She has just been given some rollerblades too. Pop on the train to go to museums and the beach, learning to cook a bit more, playing badminton, making bath bombs, learning to make jam, bike rides, library, swimming, cinema with clubcard vouchers. That said, I always find the summer holidays too long, plus there is a lot I want to do to the house. She loves making things out of Fimo, which doesn't involve me.

I can't wait. But I'm a sahm which perhaps makes a difference. I can't wait to be able to do our own thing and not be rushing about everywhere.

Four dc aged 7, 5, 3 and 7 months. We'll be visiting PIL for two weeks. Other than that, we'll be having the odd play date, playing in the garden, going out to a family park we have a season ticket for, going swimming, going to the beach, couple of museum trips, doing the Summer reading challenge, generally just doing our own thing - crafting, baking, playing, whatever we fancy. The 7 and 5 year old will go to a day of forest school and a day's science camp in August but I am keen not to tie us down too much, plenty of that in term time.