Do you live near the beach? If so, be sure to hit the sand a few times.
With the children now on holiday for the summer most of us will be preparing ourselves for the inevitable cries of “I’m bored” or “what are we doing today?” To many of us this is a real pain because despite our best efforts we just can’t keep coming up with new ideas to keep the children entertained, especially right across the six-week break and it’s even worse when it rains, (which it almost certainly will).
Families aren’t blessed with money, and there are only so many times you can do activities that cost – either through entry fees or for the cost of the day’s entertainment, (by the time you’ve factored in gasoline, food and drink it all adds up, even if there are no fees for entry). You also have the issue associated with overseas summer vacations once the kids break up from school because it becomes “peak” vacation season and the travel agents put their prices up accordingly, often putting an overseas holiday out of the equation.
So, the question remains, how do you keep the kids entertained throughout the summer without breaking the bank? Well, just because they’re not at school doesn’t mean that they have to switch their brains off. Try and keep their creativity flowing so that they go back to school with some new skills and something to tell their friends about, even getting them to join a club after school once they go back based around their new hobby. Here are a few relatively inexpensive activities that will help to keep them both entertained, and using and developing their creative sides.
Art
It might seem like a bit of an “old school” idea to get them to sit down with some paper and some pencils, but drawing can keep them entertained for hours, especially on a rainy day. Encourage them to sit down and draw something going on out of the window, maybe to draw their favorite character from the television show they’re spending hours watching, or to design a logo that you could turn into a sew-on patch, (take a look at pricelesspatches.com for examples), so they can attach it to one of their shirts or backpack to distinguish their equipment or clothing from everyone else’s in their class.
Lego
This is another blast from the past for many people, but Lego is still a highly popular pastime, especially if you can invest in a generic bucket of bricks that creates an endless number of possibilities. A lot of children can spend hours sitting with their bricks creating houses, cars, planes and much more just with a few bricks and a bit of ingenuity.
I put my son’s name on his wall by cutting out letters from the leftover sticker from his “basketball man” and it turned out great.
“Decorating” Their Bedroom
Okay, they might not really be decorating it, but you could mask that as a term for “tidying it up.” By removing some of the tired wallpaper or painting over some of the old paintwork, you can encourage them to move their beds and tidy under and around it, throwing out old toys to “make space” and getting rid of the things they’ve outgrown. In return, they can choose and put some of the new paint on the walls and then put their room back together in a tidy fashion, (for the time being at least!)
