Stay At Home Activities For The School Holidays
The school holidays are fast approaching, and I know some of you have already started! We’re very excited about our camping trip, but we have a few weeks of being at home to get through first. That’s where this post comes in – I’m going to let you have a peek at some of the fun ideas I’ve jotted down for home activities!
When the kids are at home, I have a little system called “planning your pins”. It basically means I have a little activity to pin our day on each day. It could be a 5 minute craft or a full-blown day trip. But it means that we have something special to break up each day.
I find the easiest way to brainstorm our home activities is to come up with themes. I then allocate a theme per week. But you can dip in and out of our list however you please.
48 Home Activities by Theme
Fruit
- Go strawberry picking
- Watch Mr Bloom
- Plant some seeds
- Make a fruit salad
- Cut fruit up and do some printing
- Make a fruit smoothie
- Play the fruit salad game
- Make fruit skewers
- Do a blind taste test of different fruits
- Make some fruit shapes out of playdough
Pirates
- Treasure hunt – (make your own clues or hide chocolate coins)
- Go on boat ride
- Go to the seaside
- Watch Peter Pan
- Walk the plank (secure a plank of wood to walk along)
- Make a treasure chest
- Play in the sandpit
- Draw a treasure map – (use teabags to make it look authentic)
- Watch Muppet Treasure Island
- Make an eye patch
The Gruffalo
- Read The Gruffalo
- Make a Gruffalo crumble – (just a regular crumble really)
- Buy some different types of nuts to try
- Watch the film
- Go on a Gruffalo trail – (using the Gruffalo spotter app)
- Act out the story
- Read The Gruffalo’s Child
- Design your own imaginary monster
- Make a Gruffalo mask
- Visit a deep dark wood!
Africa
- Visit a local wildlife park
- Watch The Lion King
- Read some non-fiction books – fact finding
- Do a collage / painting of a lion
- List as many African animals as you can
- Watch Tinga Tinga
- List as many African countries as you can
- Read The Elephant’s Child (by Rudyard Kipling)
- Make some African animals out of playdough
- Lion face painting
Disney Princesses
- Build a palace out of blocks
- Dress up
- Host a Princess ball
- Print out some pictures to colour in
- Make some Mickey Mouse ears out of paper plates
- Watch a Disney princess film
- Make a crown out of card
- Visit a castle
So these are a few of the things that we’re thinking about doing in the school holidays. There is also a second instalment of fun stay-at-home activities with even more fab ideas, so check it out!
Which of our home activities do you fancy having a go at? Can you think of any new themes that your little one might be interested in? What do you like to do with your kids in the summer holidays? Do you have any stand-out activities that you remember doing as a kid? I’d love to hear your thoughts so please leave me a comment below!
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Hi Lucy
I nominate you for..
https://oldhouseintheshires.com/2017/07/13/real-neat-blog-award/
Not sure if you do these things but could be fun?
x
I love the concept behind the pins, Lucy, as well as the themes and activities you’ve shared. Thanks for sharing!
Love these ideas. Sounds like you’re going to have a great summer 🙂
[…] Finally, with the summer holidays fast approaching, the post I’m linking up for Blogcrush week 22 is Stay At Home Activities For The School Holidays. […]
Such a good way to do it! I keep meaning to find The Lion King – such an amazing film to watch with children. I cried through the soundtrack the other day!! #BlogCrush
Lucy this is brilliant! I love the idea of the themes!!! Such fab and doable ideas! Definitely going to give some of these a try xx #Blogcrush
I love how you’ve themed all the activities – what a clever idea! I also love the idea of having something special to look forward to each day. #BlogCrush
This post is packed with brilliant ideas! I’ll definitely be using some, so thank you! My daughter loves the Gruffallo and my husband loves crumble, so that’s a win all round! X #blogcrush
Popping back for #blogcrush
GENIUS!!! Love how you categorized by theme!!! Going to stick this gem up on my Pinterest board!
#blogcrush
Some fantastic ideas here. Love anything to do with the Gruffalo! Great post. And thanks for featuring my post, Daddy’s Bedtime Adventure!
#BlogCrush
My ‘little one’ now towers over me at about six feet or so and summer activities are mostly pushing him out the door while pulling a game controller out of his hands lol This brought back such lovely memories of those amazing summer days fulled with fun, learning, and more fun.
Thank you, Lucy, this is delight-filled and I wish everyone a wonder-filled summer.
Dropped by today from #Blogcrush and off to share this treasure chest of summer joy.
Hope this weekend is treating you kindly. 🙂
I’m stealing this list..you’re a friggin genius Lucy. I love the themes and so many different ideas to try out. Hope you have fun on your camping trip.xx #blogcrush
Making the activities themes is an awesome idea! Adding awesome ideas in each theme, wow! Nice. I am certain we will be referring to this list. THANK YOU! #BlogCrush xoxox
Hi, I liked be the idea of the pins a great idea. I also think the categories are great. The Africa theme is my favourite #dreamteam
My two aren’t at school yet, but as I work from home with them I’ll definitely be pinching some of these ideas! #dreamteam
I love these ideas. I’ll have to try a few of these over the summer with my little girl. #TriumphantTales
My daughter loves to read, so we spend quite a lot of time going to the library. We both love it there.
#TriumphantTales
#triumphanttales okay, this is one to archive so that when i get to week 3ish and my creativity has gone – boom, ill check this post out and have a Gruffalo themed week 🙂
This is brilliant! Great ideas here too. #dreamteamlinky
I. Love. This. We’re unfortunately going to be house-bound for most of the holidays as I’m going for an op on Friday with a “no driving for up to 6 weeks” instruction. Booo! We don’t have much within walking distance so I am really going to have to get my imagination into gear to keep these little ones amused. I love the Africa, Gruffalo and Pirate themes in particular as my two would love them! I’ll be back. I can feel some themed days coming up for us this summer! Brilliant Lucy. Thanks for sharing with #DreamTeam xx
[…] You have to take your time with a barbecue – it’s all about the laid-back, summer […]
I love the idea of having an activity to pin each day on and having themes for the weeks. We make a summer holidays activities list at the start of the summer which means there are plenty of ideas for things to do each day – like your list, some are little things that will take a few minutes and others are bigger things. Having a list of ideas always helps! 🙂 #sharingthebloglove
This is exactly the type of post I was hoping to read tonight! The girls and I were just chatting as I tucked them in, that tomorrow we will make a grand list for the summer holidays…definitely going to be a few of these on there! Thanks!
Thanks for sharing with #coolmumclub
I love the idea of having a set theme for a day and completing different activities together #coolmumclub
popping back from #sharingthebloglove
Love how you have put themes together – very clever
I love the idea of having a theme for the week – it seems to make everything just hang together much more. My mum was a teacher and we always loved our summer holidays – they were filled with things like this, and I’d like to do the same for my children. Thanks for joining us at #SharingtheBlogLove
Great post with lots of fab ideas! I am looking forward to the holidays so much. #sharingthebloglove
Brilliant ideas here Lucy – I’ll be bookmarking this for later. Thanks so much for linking up to #TriumphantTales – hope to see you again on Tuesday!
Great set of activities. I think I would suggest booking in some geocaching too which would fit nicely with the pirate theme. #TriumphantTales
I definitely want to get some dressing up clothes so my daughter can do pretending to be a princess! Some lovely ideas here xx #DreamTeam
I love the idea of having themes, it will spark so much more imagination in them. We will definitely be doing so many of these when my daughter finishes tomorrow. Thank you for joining us at #SharingtheBlogLove
[…] summer holidays are in full swing and 6 weeks is a pretty long time! Lucy’s list of stay at home activities for the summer holidays will keep your little ones entertained, with so many ideas for themes and activities around those […]
Popping back from #sharingthebloglove 🙂
Oh, such creative ideas! Thank you for putting this together, loads of stuff to get us through the summer! Ray x #SharingTheBlogLove
Lovely ideas! Now that the summer holiday is here, I desperately needed a piece like this. Thank you for your tips (and the beautiful pics as well). 🙂 xxx #SharingtheBlogLove
I love the idea of a theme for a week, I will keep this in mind! #sharingthebloglove
DEFINITELY a post to pin! With one month left before school starts back and no more summer camps, I’ll be referring. back to your article as needed!
#SharingtheBlogLove
This looks like such a good plan for the summer! Good luck with not giving into the lazy! I always start with such good intentions and it always seems to end in TV and books
[…] This craft is so easy and yet it looks really effective. As my regular readers will know, I like to organise our school holidays around themed weeks. We’ll be using this edible fish craft as part of our “Under the sea” theme. For more “Under the sea” ideas and to check out our other themes and activities, pop back next week, or you could check out the themes we’ve already done in this list of stay at home activities for the summer holidays. […]
Some really good ideas, I have planned things for everyday but are crafty things or baking things and then once a week to go for a walk somewhere and a picnic. We will only go and do ‘expensive’ things a few times during the holidays as I don’t think you need to spend much to have fun! We did the Gruffalo Spotters Trail last week and I was really impressed with how good it was! 🙂
#brillblogposts
[…] summer holidays are in full swing. Time for playing, paddling in the sea, meeting up with friends, staying up late, […]
[…] few weeks ago, I gave you a some ideas to keep your kids entertained at home through the school holidays. However, I’m sure the inevitable cries of “I’m bored” are […]