Tag: Summer Holidays

Six Affordable Ideas for Days Out with the Kids.

So, the summer holidays are almost upon us and parents everywhere are facing up to a big shift in their routine. Soon, you’ll no longer be packing the kids off to school before finally finding some time to breath in a morning that’s probably already felt like it was an entire day. Soon, those kids are all yours again for a hectic 6 week period!

So, what can you do to fill those long hours? Well, I might just have some useful and hopefully affordable solutions.

My children are both a bit older now and so we don’t get to go to some of the types of places that I’ll list, but the first one is still popular, despite my eldest now being 17.

Farm parks are always a winner with kids. Obviously there are always plenty of animals to look at and at some of the parks you can even let your little (or big) ones pet the animals. Such is their popularity that lots of farm parks have expanded over the last decade or so and include a wide range of experiences for your kids to enjoy, like tractor rides, sheep racing, adventure play grounds and even mini golf.

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Farm Parks are very much a growing industry and as such can be found all over the country. We have Cannon Hall Farm down in Barnsley, which is only about a half hour drive away and it’s absolutely fantastic for kids, making it very popular indeed. My daughter still insists we go every summer, even though she’s just turned 17 and my almost 14-year-old son always enjoys himself too.

A quick Google search showed me that there are enticing farm parks in almost every region and Trip Advisor lists some of the best as being in the Cotswolds, Essex, West Yorkshire, Stratford, Devon and Shropshire. There are plenty to choose from in both Wales and Scotland too.

https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attractions-g186217-Activities-c47-t122-England.html

Prices vary and a good tip is to visit on a weekday when many parks reduce their rates. Our local one at Cannon Hall only charges £6.95 for adults and children over 2 on weekdays, meaning a family day out for under £30, which is brilliant!

Den Building. This is something I’ve written about before and it’s always a winner with kids. It’s free too! Just get yourself along to your local woods, pick a spot to build a den and then get the kids scavenging for materials to build with. Make sure that you’re not breaking branches off trees though! Lots of places regularly trim their tress though, meaning that if you keep your eyes out there’ll be a ready supply of logs and branches to build with. Combine your den building with a walk through the forest and maybe even a picnic and you’ve got at least a fun few hours out for everyone. And if you’re not sure where to start there are some den building tips on the link below.

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/blog/2019/10/how-to-build-a-den/

Picnics! The idea of eating outdoors – or just anywhere that’s not a table – is always exciting for children. So, knock up whatever your kids love to eat – usually some sandwiches, sausage rolls, fruit, juice and a few sweet treats for ours – and head to the park. You could fill a bit of time on the swings or even liven up your day with some games. I bought a plastic and foam baseball set (bat and ball) in Asda years ago and it’s provided hours of fun for us as a family playing a hybrid game of rounders and cricket. We still use it now when we head to places like Roundhay Park, in fact! All that fresh air and running around never fails to help them sleep and a decent picnic ensures full tummies too!

Plodging! Plodging, I hear you ask. Well, let me educate you a little bit. Plodging is in fact the art of wandering around in a body of water and kids absolutely love it. My two loved being able to get their wellies on and go in the streams of our local country parks and in fact, they awarded me a trophy not long ago and I reckon my role in their plodging history was what earned it for me.

The coveted ‘World’s Greatest Dad’ glasses case really is the big one in the dad awards world!

Obviously you have to keep a close eye on them, but it’s always fun. You can even go in with them, especially if they’re younger, but it’s about common sense, I suppose. Stick to the shallows and don’t let anyone get too adventurous! You could make things more interesting seeing who can find the shiniest rocks or best shells if you’re at the seaside or even come back out and try skimming stones. And don’t knock grabbing rocks, by the way; my son used to love doing this and amassed quite the collection as the years went by! I think he might even still have some!

Museums. Museums provide an excellent experience for kids. And many of them are totally free! The best bit is that the UK has loads of museums covering a wealth of different subject matter, so there’s sure to be something for your kids.

My home town of Newcastle has both the Discovery Museum and the Great North Museum, as well as Beamish, The Living Museum of The North slightly further afield, while where I live now in Yorkshire we have Eureka, The National Children’s Museum, the National Film and Photography Museum, the Leeds Museum, The Thackray Medical Museum, The Royal Armouries, as well as the Railway Museum in York and lots of others.

While doing some research for the article, I also discovered the wonderful Manchester Museum, the brilliant Kelham Island Museum in Sheffield, the Coventry Transport Museum, The National Football Museum in Manchester, The National Museum of Scotland, The North Lincolnshire Museum in Scunthorpe, The Blaise Castle House Museum in Bristol and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. The list could go on and on and we haven’t even looked at London!

Lots of museums nowadays are interactive and child friendly, so it’s not just a couple of hours of staring at objects in glass cases, which might well bore even the most patient of children. From descending down an old mineshaft in one of a surprising number of mining museums that we have, to riding around cobbled streets on a tram or old trolley bus at Beamish, there are a whole host of options to explore and there’s sure to be a fantastic museum near you.

The Beach. Surrounded by water as we are here in the UK, lots of us are lucky enough to have a beach somewhere that’s reasonably close. Living in Leeds, we’re very much landlocked and the likes of Scarborough and Bridlington are a good hour and a half drive away, so days out at the beach are few and far between. But we are able to recreate the beach experience at places like Bolton Abbey where we can sit at the side of the river and safely plodge, if needed!

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The beach always has something to do though and it’s generally relatively inexpensive. You could dig holes, build sandcastles, go rock-pooling, play bat and ball or even hold a beach Olympics and it’s going to cost you very little, especially if you’re lucky enough to live close to the sea. Just make sure that you check out the weather forecast in advance!

Country Parks. Again, living in Yorkshire we’re blessed with quite a few of these nearby and they still provide a good day out with our kids, even at the cynical, moody ages they’re at now!

Many country parks have play areas, adventure playgrounds, trails to walk and other fun to be had, but really a day at the park is exactly what you make it. We would always take stuff to do; a kite, bats and balls, a football and even an insect hunting kit at one stage! Younger ones can even just be told they’re going exploring and they’ll enjoy the mystery of that…as long as you add some drama. The link below picks out some of the best ones in the UK.

https://www.ratedtrips.com/travel-ideas/the-best-country-parks-in-the-uk

So hopefully there’s a bit of inspiration there that helps you or yours out this summer. It can feel like a long time to be with your children day in, day out, but it can be made more than memorable with a little bit of thought. And as you can see, it doesn’t have to cost the earth either!

The long, wet summer just passed me by…

I’m very lucky, in many ways, to be a teacher. Forget things like pay and conditions – which in actual fact, aren’t that bad – there are lots of things to be thankful for in my profession. I get to work with young people full of ideas, emotions, hope, naivety and energy for one thing. I get to help kids produce amazing things. I get to work alongside them and many brilliant colleagues and I have to admit that I get to have what can feel like endless laughs.

All very nice, right? And now you’re thinking, here comes the bad stuff? Make way for the abuse, the long hours, the meetings, blah, blah, blah. Well, you’d be wrong. What I wanted to mention was the summers. The teacher’s summers. Because after a couple of decades of teaching, it’s still the summer holidays, those six blissful weeks, that are the most attractive feature.

So, I thought I’d go through a quick review of my latest summer holidays.

After all of the build up, I’m not going to lie; this one’s been pretty damn poor in many ways. One of my favourite things about summer is standing in the garden early in the morning, hanging out washing on the line, looking up at a blue sky, feeling the sun on my face and just thinking about the fact that the rest of the day is stretching out in front of me, as is the rest of whatever remains of my summer. Bloody wonderful.

Except, that hasn’t really been the case this summer. As the rain fell and just continued to fall and fall and fall, I distinctly remember that our washing basket was positively overflowing. In fact, I remember my son telling me that he’d ran out of underwear at one point! So, it’s safe to say that the weather this summer has been really underwhelming. And that, ladies and gents is more than enough to make your summer…well, a bit of a bummer. Not only does it impact on one’s leisurely laundry fantasies, but it means that days out, gardening, and any outdoor jobs and projects that have been saved up for these precious 6 weeks, just sit there, undone and nagging at you. As a result, I have to say that in many ways it’s not been the best of summers.

One thing that we have done that’s really maximised the fun we could have over summer is to take a couple of holidays. I say holidays; one was a three day break that was then followed by two days in Newcastle seeing family and friends, so that was a holiday in a kind of left field way.

I’ve blogged about our main summer holiday in North Wales, so I won’t dwell on that here, suffice to say that we had a lovely time in a truly special part of the UK. We left the day after the end of the academic year and it felt absolutely amazing to be wandering around on a beach, escaping the stress of work life so quickly after leaving my classroom.

Our other holiday was a bit different. Firstly we spent three days in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. We stayed in a nice guest house, spent some time on the beach and spent a whole load of time in arcades – having raided our coppers jar for 2 pence pieces in advance – while also upholding the family tradition of having dad (me) hold the bags while mum and the kids go on some rides! It all felt really relaxing.

Straight after returning from Scarborough we headed to Newcastle for a couple of days for a break that we had all been looking forward to. The main reason for this was because this would be the first time we would see family and friends in 18 months (because of Covid, not out of choice).

Again, we had a lovely relaxing break, meeting up for coffee with our closest friends on the Quayside in Newcastle, going out for tea with my parents and then out for a nice walk with them the next day. We also visited an excellent gluten free bakery which happened to be in a part of the city where I’d spent a lot of my childhood, but hadn’t been back to in probably over 25 years. So that was a really interesting thing to do, not least because it allowed me to show my own children these places. Interesting to note that in what we might call a slightly rougher end of town, within seconds one of my children was asking if we should be locking the car doors!

When we returned home after our breaks in Scarborough and Newcastle we were exhausted and apart from getting through a veritable mountain of washing, we made sure that we relaxed and did very little for the next few days. And I suppose this is an excellent example of the privilege’s of a teacher’s summer; there often isn’t any sense of urgency. Whether you go places, take on projects or extend yourself in any way is entirely up to you – you do not need to give work or going to work even the briefest of thoughts for whole chunks of your summer. Ask most teachers and they’ll tell you that there will always come a point in every summer where they genuinely don’t know what day it is.

By this point I’d also managed to do myself an injury which did its best to curtail my summer fun. Maybe it was the sense of freedom that did it, but while throwing myself around in goal during a training session for the team that I coach, I damaged a nerve under my shoulder and found myself in quite intense and constant pain for a while. And because visiting a doctor during these Covid times is quite a drawn out affair, it took far too long to get proper painkillers. Thus, my decorating slowed down, my enthusiasm for anything remotely physical waned and my mood took a bit of a beating.

A planned break in the Lake District was duly postponed – too much to do at home, too tired from galivanting around the country for the previous few weeks – leaving us to see out the last couple of weeks of our summer together with the odd day trip and catching up on some of those long put off jobs around the house. The weather didn’t help the appetite to leave the house as the British summer petered out and seemed to surrender far too easily to autumnal conditions. And before I knew it, I was doing the usual of kidding myself that it was a good thing that I still had3, then 2, then 1 day left at home.

I can’t complain too much. Even the weather doesn’t get in the way of the fact that I can spend 6 weeks not having to wear a suit and tie and that my shirt ironing is down to a bare minimum. It’s also 6 weeks of leisurely cups of coffee, of an extra hour in more in bed, more late night television and best of all, 6 weeks of possibility where work will hardly ever get in the way.

So while Summer was wet and seemed to pass by far too quickly, it was still peaceful, it was a considerable amount of fun and despite the injury still hanging around, it was still, in many ways, pain free.

I hope you enjoyed reading and as ever, feel free to leave a comment as they’re always appreciated.