Contains Affiliate Links

I like to plan activities to stop the kids moaning keep the kids happy during the school holidays. I find that if they have something (however big or small) to do each day, the holidays run much more smoothly. In our house, we choose a different topic for each week and then plan activities accordingly. For more information about how to do this, check out this post.

Today’s post is a run down of the activities and themes we’ve got planned for the second half of the summer holiday (and if you follow me on twitter, you might see some photos of us actually doing them!).

Feel free to use our plans or make up your own. My kids are 5 and 1 so that’s where these activities are pitched. We have got Train Week, Farm Week and a short Unicorn Week.

Train Week Activities

I think most kids find trains fascinating – they’re so big and fast and noisy.

We wanted to kick our week off with a visit to York Train Museum to set the scene. If you’ve never been, you should! It’s free to get in (donation if you like) and is filled with REAL trains that you can explore. If you live too far from here, you could substitute it with watching Cbeebies’ Chuggington.

On Tuesday, we’ll be decorating big cardboard boxes and sitting inside them!

Our cardboard box train

But the real highlight will be Thursday’s train journey. If you don’t fancy riding a real train, you can probably find a local park that runs a small ride-on train in the school holidays.

At the train station

Farm Week Activities

Farms are a real crowd-pleaser when it comes tochildren.

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Play Animal Snap	Decorate Farm Cupcakes	Make a scarecrow	Old MacDonald Picture using BakerRoss stickers	Visit the Farm

Snap is a classic card game that helps children to recognise different animals although I am particularly looking forward to decorating the cupcakes on Tuesday (find step-by-step instructions here). I’ve already baked the cakes and put them in the freezer so that we can straight on with the fun bit – colouring and cutting the fondant icing!

I’ve never made a scarecrow before so it could be a disaster (!) but I’ve found this ‘how-to’ so we’ll give it a bash.

No doubt we we’ll be singing lots of ‘Old MacDonald’ (it’s the toddler’s favourite anyway!) and of course the visit to a real farm will be brilliant!

Unicorn Week Activities

We stuck our Baker Ross Unicorns to the ceiling!

The 5yo is really into Unicorns at the moment so we had to fit a Unicorn week in somewhere. With the Bank Holiday and the way the holidays have fallen, though, it’s just a quick three-day plan.

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
	BakerRoss Flying Unicorn Craft	Watch Despicable Me	BakerRoss Unicorn Stencil

I really love the BakerRoss craft kits (as a mummy who isn’t very good at craft, it is great to buy pre-prepared kits for a decent price!). So we’ll be making the flying unicorns on Tuesday, and also using the unicorn from the pink stencil set to do some painting on Thursday.

The film for this week will be Despicable Me because the little girl on it loves unicorns (a bit like my own little girl!).

So there we go -another 3(ish) weeks of activities to get your teeth into! If you fancy looking at my other plans, check out this post for activities linked to China, Birds, and Fruit!

This page contains some affiliate links. For more info, check out my Disclosure Policy.