With the summer holidays here, it can be an incredible challenge finding things to keep the kids entertained and occupied. We’ve come up with a handful of fun, child-friendly activities that you can do as a family to keep busy and let the kids have a great story to tell their friends when they go back to school.
1. Camping
Everyone loves to go camping, don’t they? A great opportunity to get away from home, spend time as a family and to go out and do things together. Camping is great for kids as it teaches them, especially in this day and age, that they don’t always need to rely on technology to have fun. Before technology became a huge thing for the younger generations, we had to make our own fun by heading down to the river or lake to go fishing or crabbing. If your campsite has a nearby river, and you have a rubber dingy, you could even take the kids out on that along the river to let them watch their surroundings. Camping also teaches children to do things themselves. They can help out with cooking, they can refill the water barrel using onsite water supplies, they can take the clothes to the washing facilities etc. And finally, at the end of the day in the late summer evenings, you can all sit around the campfire drinking hot chocolate and enjoying pancakes that can easily be made using a frying pan and a camping stove.
2. Making Fun Pancakes
We obviously love all things pancake but a great activity is to get creative, making and decorating fun themed pancakes. Kids can get involved in the whole process by creating fun looking pancakes, particularly by making faces. They can use slices of bananas and blueberries to make eyes, half a strawberry for a nose, and use chocolate sauce to draw a mouth. You could use our Vegan Classic American Pancake Mix to get started. Here are some other ideas that might be enjoyable for kids to create:
The bumblebee pancakes look outstanding. All you need to do is make two small oval shaped pancakes, cut a round slice of banana in half so you have two semi-circles to use as wings, and you can use chocolate sauce or even icing to decorate the pancakes as bees. To make the presentation even more appealing, you can make a flower using a pancake and fruit like the one shown in the photo.
3. Make Homemade Ice Lollies
It’s summer, it’s hot. Kids are most likely going to complain that they’re feeling hot, so why not help them cool down by making ice lollies with them? They’re fairly easy to make and you can find plenty of recipes online that have all kinds of different flavours. An obvious ice lolly flavour is strawberry and we’ve got the perfect recipe here for kids to follow. You could even allow the kids to make these themselves as no ovens are required so there is very little chance of them getting hurt.
4. Arts & Crafts
This can be a slightly – okay, VERY – messy activity but it keeps the kids entertained for a few hours, maybe even all day. If you want to make it extra fun, why not make it a competition between them and their siblings or friends? Come together with other parents and have a craft competition. Assign the kids something to create out of materials around the house such as empty egg cartons, empty bottles, milk lids, crisp packets etc, and whoever makes the best craft wins a prize. Our friends at Made By Me Craft Parties have a great seleciton of craft kits.
5. Rock Painting
Children love to get creative so why not give them some rocks to decorate? Acrylic paint is best and will last longest or you can varnish them afterwards. You can also use marker pens to write short inspirational messages or kind words on the rocks. A nice idea is to leave them around your local area for people to find. You also could give the kids some ideas – ladybird, bumblebee etc – or you can leave them to it and they can design their own rock.
