Today marks the start of 3 weeks winter school holidays for my children. Many of my readers from the USA are also on holidays and I’ve seen some beautiful photos of your summer school holidays.
It’s difficult to keep children entertained during both a Summer and Winter break. In Summer a lot of the time it’s too hot to play outside for long periods of time and in Winter it’s too wet and cold.
We have a few outings planned and a few movies we want to see but it’s not practicable or affordable to go out all the time.
Being a single parent family we operate better when our days semi planned – there seems to be a little less chaos if there are activities for the kids to do rather than left to their own devices. During school holidays the day is split into two – AM and PM with the younger two having a nap in the middle of the day.
During the AM we generally get out of the house for one of the planned outings or go out for some exercise (weather permitting). In the PM we have some free play – which for my children means destroy as much as possible in as little time as possible or continually ask to play the Xbox!
These holidays I have come up with an idea to provide a slightly more structured approach for PM and keep the boys off the gaming console for as long as possible – The Lucky Dip.
Today I went to my local K-Mart store who have super cheap activities for children of all ages. I think the equivalent in the USA would be Target.
Today I picked up the following to get us through the first week:
My plan is to wrap these up for a lucky dip each day. We will pick a parcel from the basket and complete it. The kids don’t have to get involved, they can still do their free play but this just gives us something to do together creating some bonding time and exploring our creative sides.
There’s a range of crafts for all 3 of the older boys. We have some jump ropes, some Lego and some cooking to be done.
Also in the lucky dip box will be choices for us to get out of the house (weather permitting). A walk around the block, a bike ride, a trip to the playground, a trip to the sports oval – I’m also going to use these for the AM when we have nothing else planned.
Follow me on Instagram to see what else we get up to these holidays.
Tell me, how do you keep your children entertained the holidays?
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