It feels funny to be right in this post right now but I’m planning Summer Holiday fun again!
I wrote a post back in 2011 about how I planned our summer holidays – Miss Frugal will have been nine and Master Frugal will have been six at that point. I shared all my top tips on how I made sure that we managed to fit as much fun over the holidays as we possibly could without spending a fortune and over the years that followed this post, I did pretty much the same thing every Summer for the years they were in school, every year making sure we had the best time our budget allowed us to have.
We made so many happy memories! And now here we are, I have a new partner with two amazing children who are aged six and eleven so I’m planning again to make sure that we have a good summer holidays and that we make some memories together as a new family.
It occurred to me as I was sat at our dining room table this morning that I’m doing exactly the same today as I did every summer when my own two children were younger so I thought I’d share a little bit about what I do, just in case it helps you to plan your own Summer of fun!
I usually set aside a good hour or so to do this by the way so I’d recommend making yourself a cup of tea and retreating to somewhere you can plan in peace with a stack of post it notes.
- I start by looking at the websites of all of our local museums to see if they have anything going on because more often than not, they will have a couple of different events on through the holidays that won’t cost you a fortune and the kids will love. One of our local museums this year has bird box building for £5 per child and is actually a half day activity which I know they will love.
- I check out the local libraries to see what they have going on as they generally have some great sessions. This year the library in our village has everything from making a blow football game to arts and crafts sessions themed to particular books that the kids will love reading.
- I have a look at the websites of any local parks, farms and nature reserves to see what’s going on there and write that down too. They do anything from nature walks to Teddy Bears Picnics so worth writing them down on your post it notes too.
- I also have a look at our local bowling alley and cinema to see what’s going on and if they have any special cheaper events going on – don’t forget your local cinema might do cheaper showings of some films like ours do. Our Cineworld does cheap showings on a weekend morning at 10am which can be booked in advance so have a look at those.
- If you get the Primary Times from your school, then have a really good look through it as there is so much information in there about things that are going on in your area and even better, discount vouchers for lots of them.
I used to add the dates of everything that I came across into my Google Calendar so that at any given day I could see what was going on and where, which meant that at the start of each week over the holidays I could plan what we were going to do.
This year I really want the kids to feel involved in planning their own summer holidays which is why I’ve written everything down on post it notes. I have the date, the event and the cost along written down on each note and I’m going to let the kids choose what they want to do on each of the days. I have a weekly planner for each week that I’m going to stick on the back of our dining room door and when they get here each visit, we’ll go through each post it note and pop it on the calendar if they want to do it so we make a mini plan every week.
I can’t wait to see them planning their days with all my post it notes!
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