Spending time with your children will help them develop a sense of self, improve their cognitive skills, help with team building & friendships, social skills, make them more independent, provide them with lasting happy memories, and also help tire them out to sleep at night – and much much more.
Days out with the children can be expensive when you have the whole summer to cover. Check out your local libraries and councils for free activities. Give your child a camera and take a picnic, or if it’s raining children even love a picnic indoors.
Ideas of physical activities
- Football
- Tag
- Trampolining
- Swimming
- Ice-skating
- Bowling
- Going to the park (feeding the ducks)
- Bike rides
- Dancing
- Walks – which can also lead to collecting things for crafts such as leaves and twigs.
Craft ideas
- Gluing – from the old Argos catalogue, bits of ribbon, paper, pasta, different shaped paper, different coloured paper, pasta, rice, bubble wrap, buttons, printed out photos, and absolutely anything you can find.
- Stickers – my youngsters love just sticking stickers to paper.
- Sellotape – (see gluing for ideas of what to stick).
- Papier mache (recipe)
- Painting – either plain paper, the papier mache models, hand/finger/foot printing, potato printing, or there’s many a website where you can download pictures to paint. I find letting them paint outside takes out the stress of the mess and then I hang the pictures straight on the line to dry with pegs.
- Cutting – supervised obviously – children of a certain age love using scissors.
- Cake decorating – bit of icing and sprinkles, smarties etc.
- Paper snow/snowballs – can also be under physical I guess.
Role Play
- Play food – or if you don’t have any why not recycle empty food packaging, yoghurt pots etc.
- Dressing up – if you don’t have dressing up clothes why not let them wear some of yours, and your shoes. If you don’t fancy that then maybe a visit to charity shops.
- Weebles, happyland etc, or just about any toy when you can sit and make up stories and generally interact with each other.
Cognitive Activities
- Stickle bricks
- Duplo
- Lego
- Play doh
- Jigsaw puzzles
- Word searches (easily downloaded from the internet)
- Reading – making up stories
- Singing/nursery rhymes
- Watching a film and talking about it (maybe with some popcorn/sweets and pretend to be at the cinema)
- Mirrors – especially in the young, help develop a sense of self.
- Noisy toys – banging pots and pans.
- Board games.
- Looking at insects.
- Growing fruit and veg.
Am sure there are loads of things I’ve forgotten but I hope that this blog has been of some help to some parents out there. Have fun.
Of course there is always keeping them entertained by helping with household chores – see blog.
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