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

At Home Activities Fruit Themed

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

At Home Activities Pirates Themed

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)

At Home Activities Gruffalo Themed

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

At Home Activities African Theme

Disney Princesses

At Home Activities Disney Princesses Themed

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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44 Comments

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  1. 12
    Donna Parker

    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. 🙂

  2. 13
    Wendy

    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

  3. 19
    fridgesays

    #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 🙂

  4. 21
    Rhyming with Wine

    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

  5. 23
    Louise (Little Hearts, Big Love)

    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

  6. 24
    MMT

    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

  7. 28
    Katy - Hot Pink Wellingtons

    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

  8. 30
    Jaki

    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!

  9. 40
    Tubbs

    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

  10. 41
    Our Easy, Edible Fish Craft - step-by-step guide — Lucy At Home

    […] 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. […]

  11. 42
    Becca Farrelly

    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

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