If you find yourself three weeks into the summer holiday with smaller wallets and fresh out of ideas on how to keep your kids entertained, we’ve compiled a list of our favourite cheap activities that can breathe life into the summer for both you and your kids!
Spend a weekend or even a whole week bracing the elements and exploring the world around you. Pick up your tent and find a beautiful spot at a local campsite, park, or in your back garden and create a personal adventure holiday.
You can alter a camping trip like this depending on who you’re camping with. Suppose you’re spending the summer holidays with the kids. In that case, you can play entertaining games like charades and bowling (by filling empty water bottles with glow sticks to make pins!) and traditional activities such as hiking, bird watching, telling ghost stories around the fire and toasting marshmallows. If camping with friends, you can elevate your trip by fishing or playing traditional drinking games.
Easy to combine with camping, hide treasures around your garden or local park and create some clues for your loved ones. Split into teams or play with every man for themselves and see who can find the most treasure. Hide sweets, toys, stickers, and more for kids to find and use tricky clues and riddles for the grown-ups. Fun for everyone and a great way to get out and explore your surroundings or look at your home differently; treasure hunts bring out the competitiveness of everyone whilst working on vital team-building and lateral thinking skills.
If you don’t want to make your treasure hunt, Geocaching is a brilliant alternative. Just download the app and use it to find nearby treasures left by others – leave a gift for the next person (if you like), sign the log, and mark it off as found on the app! It’s a fantastic activity for the whole family and instantly makes daily walks more entertaining.
Whilst you’re still encouraged to be quiet in the library, the old days of strict librarians have gone. Nowadays, libraries offer lots of cheap and free activities for children, including arts and crafts, use of their computers, and stock a variety of DVDs for rent. So, even if your child isn’t much of a reader, there’s still plenty for them to get involved with whilst supporting your local community.
Just as libraries have seen a re-brand, museums aren’t as dull as you remember them. With interactive exhibits, scavenger hunts, and special tours aimed at children, it’s become a far more exciting place for children to visit. Adults can also enjoy what museums have to offer as more museums update their exhibits, so even if you’re not that into history, there’s still something for you to learn. You never know, you might become quite the history buff after your visit!
Most museums are free to enter, but donations are welcome, and some may ask for a small entrance fee. With many museums up and down the country, you can experience what history offers at a small price.
Kids love getting messy and creative. Place some newspaper or an old tablecloth on your table and let them go wild with paints, glue, and glitter. Why not challenge kids to make art based on specific prompts like a sunset, sheep, or their favourite dream? You don't have to buy many crafting tools for this either - kids can give cereal boxes, toilet rolls, and more new leases of life with ease.
Cooking and baking together is an easy way to keep kids entertained without stepping out of the house. It equips kids with the skills to cook and bake for the future and is a great way to introduce them to new foods and encourage healthy habits. Pizzas are the perfect choice for cooking with kids, and you can bake some tasty cupcakes for dessert too!
Now is a great time to pick up something new. If you’ve always fancied playing table tennis, darts, cricket, or would like to get more into biking, there’s never been a better time! You get to enjoy the sun, and you also get to exercise in a fun way that doesn’t feel like a chore.
If you want some more activity inspiration this summer, why not take a look at some of the exciting articles below?
