Its the school holidays – and boy are we ready – well I am for sure, and given that the girls asked every single day last week if it was the last day of school, I’d deffo say they are too.

I try and be a little prepared for holidays – they are off for over 7 weeks this time, and you can guarantee, without a bit of a plan, by day 2 they will be bickering, falling out and the unforgivable phrase of ‘I’m BORED’ will be uttered.  I still have to work for a couple of days a week, but the rest of the time is ours! One of the the things we’ve been putting together over the past few weeks is a summer bucket list (an idea from Mary who has her own blog, and writes for my business blog Life with Mini Me).  Basically a list of what we think are ‘must do’s’ over the summer holidays (Yorkshire Tots was a good resource for ideas) and includes:

Summer Bucket List

• Cannon Hall (of course, what holiday wouldn’t be complete without a day there!)
• Paddle in the sea and have sandcastle building competition
• Picnics
• Fairburn Ings (they loved the pond dipping last time we went)
• Barnsley Metrodome – swimming and slides for all ages
• Garden party – invite friends round with cake and games
• Water day (slides, water fights, paddling pools),
• Room on the Broom trail (at Wakefield)
• Garden camping (where’s the tent????)
• Rock scrambliing (Brimham Rocks in Ilkley)
• Open air swimming (thinking Lido in Ilkley)
• Den making (collecting cardboard boxes everywhere I go)
• Knowlsley Safari park
• Row a boat (boating lake at Shibden Park)
• Messy day – this involves a number of messy activities including covering the garden in lining paper, covering it in paint, them in old t-shirts and shorts and in they get.  It also involves me guarding the front door with the garden hose in hand!
• T-Shirt tye-dying (hmm.. should be interesting)

So I see our plan as

Mondays – Summer bucket list activity

Tuesdays – Work (Boo!)

Wednesdays – Work (Boo!)

Thursdays – Play dates – mums from church, and friends of mums from church, and anyone else that fancies coming (all are welcome) are going to meet up at Church on Thursdays, all bring the kids, pot luck picnic type of thing.  Good weather means outside activities, bad weather means inside activities – FREE day with minimum organisation involved

Fridays – play it by ear day.  I do like to keep a day a week where we can do things spur of the moment, impromptu activities can often be the best and also means less pressure – a duvet day with DVD’s sometimes is just what the doctor ordered

With the exception of work days, all things are flexible and weather dependent of course – but rather than floundering each morning trying to decide how best to use our day, we have idea’s and something to look forward to.

We also did our Bored Board this week.  Hearing the kids go ‘I’m bored‘ drives me crazy!  I came across an idea recently which I thought was fab.. wish I could remember where I saw it, was either in a mag or maybe a blog.  And it was to put together a Bored Board – basically get them to make list of home based activities they might like to do, and when ever they utter that unmentionable phrase – refer them immediately to their Bored Board for inspiration.  The kids loved coming up with ideas, and have already used it over the weekend – a totally brilliant idea.  A good suggestion was to do it before the holidays really kick in, as once kids do actually get bored, they find it almost impossible to come with ideas of what they can do.

Their Bored Board includes things such as:

• read a book
• write a story,
• make finger/sock puppets,
• put on a puppet show,
• baking
• talent show
• scavenger hunt
• write their blog
• paint a picture
• do jigsaws
• do make up and nails

.. the list goes on

So here is to the holidays, with lots of fun family time.  Keeping fingers crossed for at least a bit of sunshine over the coming weeks, and most definitely hoping that we’ve enough planned to keep ‘I’m Bored‘ from passing their lips

What do you have planned for the holidays, love to share ideas

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