Keep your sanity and bring the FUN these SCHOOL HOLIDAYS with our hot tips and activities

Easter school holidays begin next week – two whole glorious weeks with the kids! So if you’re finding that a little daunting (or not), being prepared with some prepared kids activities should save you a lot of yelling, time out and tears.

Here’s some of my top tips and activities to keep everyone sane and enjoying themselves. I’ve even included some cool ways for working mums and dads to stay connected during the week as well.

Here’s how to create your own fun packed school holiday program.

9 Indoor School Holiday Activities

1. Plan a theme day, everything you do is around the theme, eat, drink, dress, draw or colour, story time/reading time, play time. Here are some fun themes to get you started: Fairies/princesses, super heroes, pirates, console/computer games like Minecraft, Super Mario; Butterflies, dinosaurs, favourite animal or cartoon or simply have a colour theme.
2. Build an obstacle course using cushions, pillows, boxes, laundry baskets, chairs and blankets – even a small tent.
3. Buy a large scrapbook or note book and encourage your child/ren to write a school holiday diary (or draw pictures every day for young children). Try using these headings for each day (for the older kids who can write):

• Today is:  (kids add the day and date)
• The Weather Forecast:  (draw a picture)
• What I ate:  (write or draw a picture)
• What I did today:
• The best thing about today:

4. Play dress ups and do a play, remember to set up your video to capture all the fun for daddy or grand parents.
5. Create a themed activity centre, use large serving trays or cut down large cardboard boxes. Create any scene or theme your child choses to imagine. Use plastic animals, plasticine, rocks, sticks, leaves, gum nuts, sand, gravel, tin foil, cotton wool, pipe cleaners, old buttons – the list could go on and on.
6. Instead of a treasure hunt (which is always fun), go on a colour hunt inside your home. Collect objects of a certain colour, go through old magazines and cut out pictures with the right colour. Put it all together to create a collage and take a photograph.
7. Cook or bake – Mr Google and Pinterest are always helpful – search ‘cooking with kids recipes’, ‘baking with kids’ if you don’t already have a favourite recipe.
8. Write something – a letter to a relative or friend, write a funny story, write a poem.
9. Play some fun games, great if you have 2 or more kids. Here’s 6 quick ideas that work with 2 or more children – Pin the tail on the Donkey, Simon Says, Shoe Jumble, I Spy, Memory Tray, Rock, Paper Scissors.

9 Outdoor School Holiday Activities

1. Build a safe backyard bonfire
2. Build your own worm farm
3. Climb up a tree, a wall or a jungle gym.
4. Make some bird feeders and feed some birds.
5. Wash mum or dad’s car
6. Make mud pies
7. 
Go on a picnic – in your backyard or in a park
8. 
Make paper aeroplanes and have your own ‘Air show’
9. Fly a kite on a windy day (make a kite)

10 Fun Excursions

1. Visit a museum, a library or an environmental centre
2. Catch a train, bus or tram into the city (fun if you rarely use public transport)
3. Go on a nature walk, scavenger hunt along the beach
4. Play mini golf
5. Go ten pin bowling
6. Go hiking or bush walking – along a river, in a national park
7. Get out to a farmers market
8. If you live near the beach, go for a drive to the mountains. If you live near the mountains, drive to the beach. If you live in the city, drive to a country town … if you live in the country, take a trip to the CBD
9. Visit a Zoo (there are 3 awesome ones in Melbourne)
10. Go on a real treasure hunt – it’s called Geocaching, it’s free and lots of fun for all ages

And finally, for the mums and dads who are working:

5 Tips to Stay Connected During School Holidays

Try these fun ideas, some are quick and easy to set up, some may require a little more preparation.

1. Write a simple ‘I love you’ message: on a sticky note, tucked into a lunch box, in the Lego box/on the games console, in the fridge, on the toilet door, or a message in a bottle (fill your bath water and leave it floating).

2. Leave a trail of messages around the house, number them or write a clue to where the next message is. Final clue is a little gift.

3. Using this idea for older kids, you might want to leave your list of ‘chores’ in this format, it makes doing the domestic work a little more intriguing, remember a gift of appreciation as the final clue.

4. Set up Skype (it’s free) and have little chats through out the day. The best thing about this is you leave Skype open all day, it won’t cost you a cent, but you can communicate just as if you were home sitting at a desk. You can use video or just audio.

5. If your work location is not too far from home, organise a lunch date, or have the carer or grandma bring them to you for a ‘coffee’ together.

Enjoy your school holidays, it’s only two weeks.