You’re either the kind of parent who loves Summer Holidays or hates them and can’t wait to get them back to school! Either way we all need ideas to keep the kids entertained!
Just before our summer holidays start, we sit down and write a ‘Summer Bucket List’. Here is our one from last year:
We love doing this! Some plans are set and some are more relaxed and we go with the flow….and weather! We will be writing our one for this summer at the weekend.
Here are some suggestions and some of of things that will be included in our Summer Bucket List year. Our aim this year is to keep things cheap and cheerful!
Visit Family
We are luck enough to have lots of family all over the place. We have lots of family in America and Canada, but unfortunately we don’t get to visit them an awful lot!
We also have lots of family all over England and we are always guaranteed fun and laughter when we’re with them!
Library Summer Reading Challenge
Our kids enjoy doing this, and this year it’s a Dennis the Menace theme so I’m sure they’ll enjoy it again!
It’s free, gets you out of the house once a week (to change the books) and the kids are learning.
Swimming
Our little Freckled Faces are always asking to go swimming! We rarely find the time to do so, so school holidays usually means swimming time for us.
Check out your local children’s centre because sometimes they’ll team up with swimming pools to offer cheaper sessions!
Beach
We LOVE the beach! There are so many beautiful beaches in the UK. We put some on our Places We Reccommend Visiting page. We have more to add!
Some of our favourite beach games include the usual building sand castles/sculptures….or making pebble pictures/buildings depending on the type of beach! Football rounders, flying a kite, frisby, throwing pebbles in the sea and rolling down sand dunes!
Nature Scavanger Hunt
We love being outdoors, so we’ll head to a park or forest and I’ll give the kids a bag and a list of things to find…each will have have age appropriate ones. So the oldest will have a different (and more difficult) one to the youngest.
Creative/Craft time
Our little Freckled Faces love creating! I love to encourage it too. We’ll have a few craft times over the holidays. I’ll probably try to theme them too….connect them to other things we’re doing that week.
Museums
A lot of museums are free and most have lots of interactive things for kids. Sometimes will go on a train to a city and visit a museum, to make it a bit more of a day out.
Garden Fun
As I said before, we love being outside. We have plenty of garden toys and activies. We play with the chalks on the concrete, put the bubble machine on, some music, etc.
National Trust Places
We are National Trust Members and we love it! So many FANTASTIC places to visit and lots of them have great play areas for the kids and they usually have summer activities, including sports, etc going on.
Garden Camp Out
Pop the tent up in the garden, get the torches and sleeping bags ready and brush up on your shadow puppet skills! For extra fun, get some glow sticks! Make pictures with them or write words. We often have a fire pit too and toast marshmallows. The kids can then have fun playing games in the tent the next day.
I’m sure we’ll be adding much more to this list! Check out our Instagram account for photos of previous summer holidays!
What are some of your favourite things to do in the summer holidays?
4 Freckled Faces 