I know that all over the UK parents are now wondering how on earth they are going to get through the six weeks of school holidays with happy children that are not constantly complaining that they are bored.
They will have their computers and phones and gadgets, but give it a week and they will soon tire of them and want to try other things. The problem with this is it can end up costing parents a fortune trying to keep the kids amused with day trips to theme parks and expensive food outlets.
So here I am going to give a few ideas of activities you can do at home and out and about that wont break the bank .
For days out check out online via google or local facebook pages for events like Fetes and local fun days. If you set a spending limit for these and take your own lunch with you, these can be fun days usually with lots of freebies for the kids.
If your more into walking and nature, how about taking a camera out and go to your local woods or beauty spot, lakes or meadows. The children can have great fun exploring and capturing wild life and insects on the camera. When they get home you can use books or the internet to try and identify all your finds and maybe even incorporate this into make a crap book of all the different creatures you can find during the holidays.
Events: Are any big places like raceways, racing tracks, gallery's etc having free fun days for the family?
We are lucky as not too far away Santa Pod raceway is having a free family fun day. There will be monster trucks, drag racing and motorbike stunts.
Don't forget Picnics, just take a ball and a frisby and a lovely picnic lunch and you can have a lovely relaxing family day out.
If its a wet day and you can't get out and about there are still plenty of things you can do to keep the kids occupied.
How about a movie evening? Just get a cheap pizza in and a bag of popcorn, turn out the lights and stick a dvd on and watch it together, it will give you the feeling of a cinema experience in the comfort of your own home.
If your children are more active, how about building a fort with furniture and blankets? Children have amazing imaginations, and if you let them explore and build they will be able to come up with fun fantasy games that will keep them playing and happy for hours. And don't forget if its dry they can build a den outside with twigs and bits laying around.
Finally keep all your empty food boxes, containers, plastic bottles and toilet roll tubes. Put down newspaper or a plastic sheet on the floor, give them kids scissors, paints and glue and any other scraps you might have laying around and let them create their own worlds or dinosaurs, or fairys or rocket ships, whatever their creativity helps them to build.
I hope this has given you a few ideas, and if you have other budget or free ideas that parents may be interested in, please do post as I would be interested in finding lots more fun stuff to do during these holidays.
Let them learn music. If they haven't already. This is perhaps the greatest thing that you can do for a child's mind, soul, spirit, creativity, and imagination. It takes practically no money. I'm not saying to buy any instruments even. Just get them to learn to read music. And learn to write music. A book or two will do the job. Or you even have YouTube and certain available PDFs for free. And you can download almost all the great classical music on PDFs for free. Just do a search for what your want. It's not stealing, by the way. Most all of this music is in the public domain and is available on authoritative scholarly websites. Anyway, back to point. Kids may resist at first, or want to learn popular junk instead. Well, anything that peaks their interest is a good starting point. However, you yourself should hold to higher ideals, and eventually get them to learn to read the music of the masters. Start with simpler pieces by Mozart or Bach. And make sure you do Beethoven. Because everyone loves Beethoven. Or they will. The benefits of learning music is well-documented, vast, and well beyond the scope of my reply here. But suffice it to say, that children will be amazed at themselves when they find that they can do this. And it doesn't take very long. About 6 weeks is just perfect. And they will be then thrilled to discover that all of a sudden they could read and understand, and even speak and write, a whole brand new language. The language of music. For after all, that is exactly what music is. A language all its own. And one of the most beautiful ones ever given to human beings. And they will know this language forever thereafter. And it will forever enrich their lives, in ways that cannot even be imagined. And they will appreciate you for doing that for them, and they will continue to love you for it. Happy music. And joy to all.
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Wow I didn't even know there were such useful posts on Steemit!
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right on!
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Many a day we have passed building a huge den in our house and garden. Get involved with playing. Housework can wait.
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