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It can be a long, hot summer – OK, forget the hot! – when you’re trying to keep antsy children occupied with fun activities. Try these five failsafe kid pleasers – none of which will break the bank…
Water balloon fight
Spend less than a tenner and get yourself a few hundred water balloons – you’ll need lots! But don’t worry, there’s no laborious knotting as water balloons fill quickly from a hose and self-seal. If you have a garden to run around in, great – if not, transport your filled balloons to a park or open space, and let the kids fire away! And if you don’t fancy all-out war, there are plenty of water balloon-themed variations they can enjoy, including essential tidying-up games afterwards. Remember, discarded pieces can be choking hazards for wildlife.
Egg scavenger hunt in the garden
It’s not Easter, so for summer, get kids hunting ice eggs. The day before the hunt, fill balloons with water and add different food colourings to each. Freeze overnight and then cut away the balloons for multi-coloured ice eggs. Hide them in the garden and then give children a cryptic clue to help them find the first balloon and the next clue on the trail. Before freezing the balloons, insert small prizes that will freeze inside. When they melt, the kids claim them. The trick with clues is to make them enough of a challenge to hold children’s interest but not too hard that they give up. Problem solving is a key life skill and here’s where they start learning!
Help them plant seeds
Give kids a Jack & The Beanstalk moment by seed planting. Lay out potting mats, plant pots, seed trays, compost, wooden labels and kids’-size trowels and garden forks. Then explain how the growing cycle works (brush up on your Year 9 photosynthesis!), demonstrate how to plant seeds and then let them get hands-on. They’ll be spilt seeds, untidy sowing, and mud and mayhem but stay patient and encouraging. If they’re sowing vegetable seeds, for instance, explain how the seeds they’re planting will be served at your dinner table as food in a few short weeks or months.
Camp in the garden
Camping out is a great growth ring in children’s development – they’ll feel grown-up, independent, and nervously excited, but in a good way! Pitch a tent in your garden and, tent size permitting, invite friends’ kids to join yours for a night under canvas. A barbeque beforehand is a good way to enhance the outdoorsy, adventure vibe. And to atmospherically move from day to night, project a classic kids’ movie onto a white bedsheet or tell a ghost story around a campfire. And once it’s bedtime, make sure they have a key to get back into the house if needed at any point!
Pavement chalk drawing
Unleash their artistic side and brighten your driveway with street art. Buy soft-pastel, jumbo-sized pavement chalk that’s thick, so it won’t shatter on hard paving, and easy to grip, which is essential as pavement art isn’t a five-minute sketch. Kids could be working on their masterpieces for hours! Let them think big because pavement art is designed to be bold and eye-catching. Why not check out pavement art master Kurt Wenner to inspire them? And if they want to bring extra vibrancy to their chalk art, dip a paintbrush in water and ‘paint’ over the chalk to enhance the colours and give a smoother, more fluent look. Or soak chalks for 5-10 minutes before drawing and achieve the same effect.
So, get your kids outside, having inexpensive fun in the sun – and maybe learning a bit at the same time.
Find 180+ Summer Boredom Busters for Kids here.