As the Easter Holidays are over, our children head back past the playground and into the hallowed halls of schools. While parents might not need to be providing the extended entertaining sessions that week-long school holidays require, the weekends still present their fair share of challenges. Here then for hopefully helpful consideration are ten ideas help entertain and occupy your children, while at the same time giving them plenty of great memories, happy times, and even maybe some exercise and education in-between.
Ten – The Playground
If your town has a strong supply of schools, both plentiful primary and a selection of secondary, the urban planners most likely had the good sense to include several recreation areas, games fields, and playgrounds. Whether your children want to be more inventive in the making of their own games, or if they like the traditional and classic play options of the slides, swings, and springers, the local playground is always a great place to spend an afternoon.
Nine – The Library
While this might be the sort of place that you might think only a certain kind of child can enjoy, do not be fooled. Libraries are not only the domain of scalding matronly types, index finger raised in front of pursed lips. There are many exciting storytime events and reading challenges that libraries aim at all ages, and young adult literature, graphic novels, and manga are often well stocked sections, especially in libraries near busy schools.
Eight – The Beach
A natural playground filled with options for creativity and adventure. The beach is a great short trip to go on when you want to let your children really enjoy the outdoors with space to play, prance, and otherwise run free. While it is weather dependent, coastal towns still offer plenty of other ways to enjoy the area out of season. Pick carefully, take a medium length drive, and while away the day with the waves in the background.
Seven – Adventure Parks
Imagine a playground but with all the adventurous elements turned up to eleven, and then some. With rope swings, net bridges, zip wires, pirate shipwrecks, giant ball pits, trampolines, and more besides, an adventure park is an ideal place to let your children really let loose, burn off energy, and build memories with great excitement.
Six – Pantomimes
The cheese and corniness of these kinds of events is something to be savoured, enjoyed, and ultimately best experienced in a pure and unironic manner. The traditions and trappings of pantomimes have always been aimed at entertaining children, while adults laugh on by getting into a very specific spirit. With panto versions of stories ranging from Shakespeare to Greek Myth, there is much to learn alongside much fun to be had at a traditional theatre outing.
Five – Wildlife Parks
The opportunity to see the more exotic and esoteric aspects of nature is always one that should be seized. Everything from ravens to reptiles, big cats to bizarre crustaceans, there is both plenty to learn, much to love, and even more to look at and say “what is that?” with wide eyes and a wider imagination. Just be careful this doesn’t give your children too many ideas about potential pets. These animals need specialist parks for a good reason!
Four – Bike Trails
There are many places around the country, often through the most picturesque parts of the countryside, where biking is basically the best way to get around. With trails and tracks of many kinds dotted with two wheeled hiring centres, this is an excellent way to not only see some beautiful sights, but get in some great exercise.
Three – Laser Tag
Whether your little ones want to imagine themselves as Princess Leia staring down a platoon of stormtroopers, or Buzz Lightyear facing off against the forces of Zurg, a day out blasting lasers through the air will always be a fun time. Exercise, excitement, energetic running up and down a maze like mess of corridors and tunnels. What more could a child want!
Two – Science Centres
Science presents so much to learn about so many things that are a big part of children’s everyday life. A computer museum can show the reality of just how a Fortnite stream moves from a server in Los Angeles to a screen anywhere from Lincolnshire to London or even Lithuania or Lagos. A planetarium can show your children what a holiday to Mars would really be like, and a weather centre can make more sense of the seasons than a calendar could ever truly offer. Fleets of fascinating facts await.
One – Swimming Pools
Making a splashdown at the deep end is never not fun, no matter how old you are. Lengths are of course the adult way, but most swimming pools in the UK know that when kids arrive they want a little more variety, which is why they work very hard to provide it. Slides. Flumes. Whirlpools. Wave machines. Sprinklers. Floaties assault courses. With all the fun that will be had, you’ll end the day with some very tired kids that don’t realise just how many biscuits they have inadvertently burned off.
Keeping on top of the kids fun-times at weekends can be a challenge. But with a few creative ideas and a little careful planning, it need not be a chore.
Nb. Collaborative post.
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