Summer is, after what felt like forever, finally on our doorstep. While the advent of longer and hotter days may be an utter relief after a wet and miserable first half of the year, the oncoming summer does also bring with it a challenge: the school summer holidays.
As a parent, you may find the summer holidays a uniquely stressful time of year; not only do you have to accommodate the newfound freedom of your little ones around your own work obligations, but you also need to find ways to entertain them as well! If you’re finding your inspiration running a little dry this time around, you could try any one of the following ideas to not only entertain your kids, but also enjoy some quality time with them as well.
Arts and Crafts
Arts and crafts are amongst the more obvious activity solutions for spending time with your children, but no less enjoyable for it. Indeed, a ‘crafternoon’ with your children can be a highly engaging time with an exceedingly low budget to boot.
You can take your crafternoon in any number of directions, too! You could focus in on papercraft, whether creating sugar paper collages or perfecting the fine art of origami. For a more hands-on afternoon, you could use polymer clay to make trinkets together, and then paint them after they’ve dried. You could even paint along with an episode of Bob Ross! All for the cost of materials, and little more.
Water Play
Getting out of the house is always a good thing to do, and especially on hot days. Indeed, what better place to spend a hot day than in the proximity of water? Water play is a fantastic opportunity for your children to cool off, stay fit and even get a little experimental in the process; for younger children, and with the right pool toys, water play can be great for learning about volumes while working on hand-eye co-ordination.
Music
As so beautifully rendered into lyric by the great Madonna, music makes the people come together. Music is a hugely social activity, and one that can be massively instructive in early-stage development too. Something as simple as a drum circle can be a great deal of fun, while also giving your children opportunity to get to grips with rhythm. Picking up an instrument together gives you a common interest, not to mention a journey you can enjoy together throughout the summer months.
