Share your ways to make more of family days out during the summer hols with PizzaExpress - £300 Love2Shop voucher to be won! NOW CLOSED

[EmmaMumsnet]

With the long school holidays stretching out ahead of us, the thought of filling every day with entertainment is enough to exhaust any parent. So how to take a few simple activities and extend the fun across the full six weeks?

This summer, PizzaExpress is teaming up with Ice Age: Collision Course to give families great days out. Here’s what PizzaExpress has to say: “Come and visit our family-friendly restaurants across the UK and try our delicious new summer menu. We even have lots of gluten-free dishes and kids can try our Piccolo menu which features mini plates of grown-up favourites – for even the fussiest eaters.

While you wait for your food, your children can enjoy completing our Ice Age: Collision Course activity pack and even enter a competition to win a 5-day holiday to Hollywood! Simply visit a restaurant and draw a picture of your favourite Ice Age character with a pizza to be in with a chance of winning the holiday to Hollywood, Ice Age toys, goody bags, Pizza Making Parties and much more...”

PizzaExpress would love to hear your tips for making family fun last a bit longer - without constantly dishing out cash.

Could you encourage your children to do some creative writing based on a film they've watched - or put on their own performance after a trip to the cinema? Perhaps you come up with crafty activities which tie in with places you've visited or things the kids have seen? Or even encourage your DCs to cook by recreating recipes from a meal out? If you've arranged a day trip, do you extend the adventure by using different forms of transport to get to your destination? Maybe you make the preparation for a day out- like making a picnic and packing bags for the day - all part of the fun?

Please share your tips for making the most of days out and finding ways to make holiday fun last all summer long. Comment below and you will be entered into a prize draw where one Mumsnetter will win a £300 Love2Shop voucher.

Thanks and good luck!

MNHQ

Standard T&Cs Apply

Make sure you cover all eventuaities. The British weather is so changeable, so if you plan a day in the fresher, always have a Plan B. Try to keep a large variety of food at home to put together lunch boxes. Cheese sandwiches can get very boring if they are eaten every day.

Playing with the sand in the beach

We try and make plans as a family and do something we'll all enjoy, we have regular picnics, and have brunch picnics so we're out enjoying the weather daily, even if we have nothing special planned it's next to go to the park. We try and make all our activities educational. So lately we've been to places that we've visited before but this time we've read up on the history, so everyone has taken something new from the trip.

We take activity books, and paint sets with us wherever we go so no one is bored, even if it's another trip to the park again!

And we try and go out of the city and enjoy the countryside, I live in Scotland and the country is beauty this time of the year. There are a lot of natural reserves around where I live so theres always something new to see!

We ditch the car and take the train. That means we are more active, more exercise and longer travelling time, which when you aren't in a rush makes the day last longer and feel more adventurous.
Plus not driving gives me the chance to actually look out of the window for once!! xx

I always search for vouchers and organise my days out accordingly!

let every member of the family decide what your all going to do on their chosen day

Setting post-activity challenges is always a great way to ensure they get more out of family activities.

• Drawing/painting a picture of their favourite animal from the trip to the zoo was this week's

I love to take a packed lunch, lovely sitting down in the open air eating all the goodies outside

Picnic are great fun for kids and promise of ice cream if they good and dont moan.
The pokemon app is big help for this as my son will happily run around like a fool , until hes almost dropping

We never plan what time we ll be home so we don't have to rush and we always collect things along the way to put in our scrap book of memories

Congratulations to HopefulHamster for winning the £300 voucher