As we enter the summer holidays, those of you with children at home, dependent on your time and energy, may feel a little bewildered at what to do with 6 weeks of nothingness. The money box rattles pathetically and you reminisce the good old days when you used to take off across the fields with a sandwich in your pocket after promising your Mum you’d be home in time for tea. 
Those days are gone and we have to be so much more careful and therefore dare I say structured about the 6 weeks off.
If you work, you may already have in place various in-laws and aunts on a rota to amuse your little ones and they might do so gladly – then lucky you! If you don’t work, you might also have family lined up begging to have their beloved grandchildren / nieces / nephews over night for an adventure….how exciting!
But for some, there are few prospects as the only coins in the money box are left over from Grandad’s foreign coin collection and there’s no family around to show any interest or lend a helping hand…. you look bleakly at the weeks ahead and wonder how you are going to fill them, right?
Just because The Railway Children lived in a safer environment, doesn’t mean we can’t take a leaf out of their books and use our ingenuity and creative juices to come up with things to do that don’t cost the earth and dont’ involve a computer, Wii, DS, Playstation, XBox etc!
So here are some ideas to get you going, and please add yours to get this list completely extensively dripping with ideas…..
- Make a camp – take old cardboard boxes, draw windows in them and build a cardboard house. Alternatively, turn chairs backwards, drape old sheets over them and create your own mountain…..my kids do this for hours and beg me to allow them to keep it up for as long as possible. They hide inside, take snacks in there…..and if you can do it outside, even better for meal times as you can do fun picnics, story times etc with a whole new environment – kids will do this for hours!
- Agility courses…. you need : flower pots, garden chairs, boxes, broom handles, tomato canes, buckets, a sheet, a rope, a water sprinkler….anything that can be created to jump over, run through, crawl under….makes for hours of fun! Time them, have family olympics, get the pets to join in too!
- Visit a Museum….goodness me how fortunate are we in the UK to have free museums? And they’re not boring either!! Whatever age your children are, there is always something to enjoy. Visit a city you haven’t been to before. If you’ve not been to London, this is a great site of free things to do there as well as all the obvious.
- City visits : Google your local city (ie Free Events in London)and see what is going on under your nose, it’s easy to forget what is on our doorstep when we are so busy thinking the grass is greener elsewhere. Every city has free stuff to do and interesting things to see, often we just aren’t aware of what is laid out for us by our own local councils and churches, local businesses, volunteer groups etc
- Adventure picnic…you don’t need to go anywhere in particular, just go somewhere you haven’t been before, by bike, by bus, on foot – it doesn’t matter how you get there, just go somewhere different!! Enjoy your picnic and come home again.
- Walk – if you don’t have dogs, it’s an easy one to not think of. There are however beautiful forests, woods, coast lines, lakes, parks, arboretums…. endless options for you to go walking in and enjoy the fresh air and beautiful nature that surrounds us. Don’t forget to point things out to the children, make things educational whilst you’re at it.
- Bake…spend time together in the kitchen. I’m a terrible control freak in the kitchen and can’t stand it when it’s messy so it takes alot of patience for me to let the children go near flour…..but they LOVE it, so I make myself do it and believe it or not, the kitchen survives, and I live to tell the tale…every time!! Children have such a sense of achievement from taking raw ingredients and seeing something like a cake, a pudding or even a whole meal come together. If your children are old enough, perhaps get them to make a meal on their own and give them run of the kitchen…it gives them such a sense of pride to be trusted by Mum.
- Kitchen Table fun – Ok I’m going to insult your intelligence here, but here’s a few obvious ones that slip through the net for the infants : colouring, playdough, lego, writing, making up stories, number games – these will keep their brains ticking over and help them burn their mental energy as well as physical!
- Car washing and other chores around the house….. get them involved in running the house. Create a list of chores for them to do each week. They’ll have similar in school, why should that be let go in the holidays and why should you have to do everything? Kids need responsibilities at all ages…it could be emptying the dishwasher, laying the table, sweeping the floor, watering the flowers….something to give them ownership over their time.
- Create a home theatre – this is an old fashioned one but it really inspires them……be it from behind the curtains or a home made puppet show, it really gets their creative juices flowing and being able to dress up and act out stories to Mum and Dad and whoever else you can rope into watching does them a world of good!
Remember it’s not only physical energy that needs exercising but also their mental energies. My son, if he’s not mentally challenged absolutely climbs the walls and that’s when stresses start rising for everyone. If we can keep our children stimulated, family life is so much more enjoyable and those sibling spats become a distant memory….plus you’ll be amazed how time flies. It doesn’t need to cost a fortune, just a bit of thought and perhaps a tad more organisation than usual.
Most of all, enjoy the time together…..fingers crossed for sunshine too 
Now remember to leave a comment with something you do which doesn’t cost a fortune ……
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
My children are too old for school summer holidays now…only just mind!,but I can remember that the holidays were jolly hard work yet great fun. Our council kept the paddling pools very clean,so many days were spent visiting different parks with paddling pools.The kids would find their new best friend for the day and I would normally find another mum to yabber too or us local mum’s would get together and go out in a huge group. At home we would do sticking with pasta shapes, seeds,feathers etc.Make dens with sun loungers and blankets and do alot of the things mentioned above.My mum still has the tablet box complete with pasta,barley and red lentils stuck on the lid which was made about 15 years ago by my eldest son. Another favourite for a couple of years was a new roll of cheap white wall paper which the kids (and sometimes me) would spend a few minutes or an hour or so a day drawing on.I used to unroll a strip of clean paper in the morning (rerolling the drawn on bit) and let the kids draw on it as and when they wanted. By the end of the 6 weeks holiday I had an amazing story on one roll of wall paper. I guess it helped as I not only had my own children and an over load of foster children,but also the local kids seemed to think that my house was THE house to be in. I miss the summer holidays!
My 4 year old son loves to have a bowl of water in the garden which he dips his feet in and makes footprints on the patio slabs. He also likes drawing on the slabs with chalk which easily washes off. He likes sticking and gluing and painting, though I do have to prepare myself for the mess, but he loves decorating boxes that can then used to store his bits and bobs. Whilst the paints are out you can explore all the different colours you can make and this keeps my son amused for ages to the point he would rather do that than the actual painting. We are lucky enough to have lots of different play parks around us so we try to go to a different one each time and we like ones with fields too so we can play football or racing and games like stop/go which is great for teaching little ones to stop when you need them to. For any crafty people out there you can rope them in to help you with making your Christmas cards as well. To be honest though what my son really loves to do is whatever I am doing like putting washing in the machine or stacking the dishwasher and he will do things like colouring in for longer if I am doing it with him. Oh and hes a massive fan of picnics. It is also great if you can do a lot of these things with your and your childrens friends so you can have some adult conversation too. I hope you all have a great summer holiday whatever your doing
xxx
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