With the children off of school for another 2 weeks so far we are surviving the summer holidays and on a MASSIVE parenting WIN we haven’t had any ‘I’m bored’ moans yet. I’m taking that as a huge win as they can come home from a fun filled day out usually and start complaining of having nothing to do.
It’s been a little busy here at times and we have packed a lot in already, however, knowing how my children cope with busy days and knowing they then need down-time after we have also had some quiet restful and lazy days too.
We have been into London a few times now trying to make our time there as fun and rewarding as possible – there was the afternoon spent at Disney HQ watching Finding Dory ahead of release with Specsavers and then heading to the Sea Life London Aquarium using our Merlin Annual Passes.
We’ve spent a fantastic 4 hours at Kidzania where the children had a blast pretending to do various job roles, you can read my previous review here and I’ll be writing about our latest visit shortly as the children tried all new jobs this time including making their own chocolate in the Cadbury’s factory, working in a hotel, making their own paper and even turning their hand to making deli wraps.
[AdSense-B]
Our latest visit was to see The Gruffalo Live at the Lyric Theatre, I’d taken advantage of the kids go free offer for Kids Week and surprised the children telling them only when we were on the train that day. Harry particularly loved it and giggled and smiled all the way through, Emmy was a little under the weather but enjoyed it and loved seeing how excited Harry was getting.
After we went on a family scavenger hunt, I’ll be writing about that in greater detail later this week.
We’ve been on holiday to Cornwall for a week and visited the Cornish Seal Sanctuary, Flambards theme park and the beach lots of times.
The children signed up to The BIG friendly read – this years summer holiday reading challenge which is run annually by local libraries. It is FREE to take part and is a fantastic way of encouraging children to read. Once signed up (all you need is your library card) they are given a collectors wallet to document 6 books over the course of summer. They don’t have to read all in one go though. Once they have read a few they need to talk to the librarian about their books to the best of their abilities – this challenge is open to all children and we have taken part ever since Emmy was a toddler, although she couldn’t read the books I could read them to her and she would point to the pictures and retell the story the best she could, Harry now does the same. After each story has been talked about they are given a collectors card to go in their wallets, once they’ve collected all 6 they will receive a certificate and a medal. Some libraries will give these out straight away and some will hold an award evening or send to the school for the head teacher to give out in assemblies.
[AdSense-A]
We’ve had days in the park with impromptu picnics, visits to the local farm and movie afternoons and nights.
We spent days in the garden, had baking days and craft days and days where we haven’t even bothered getting dressed.
Housework has been done when possible but making memories has taken priority, washing is piling up and my work is on the to-do-list still BUT the kids are having fun and we’ve only had one MAJOR incident which has now left Harry awaiting a referral to have his two top front teeth removed after a park incident which left him worse for wear and very battered, sore and now unable to eat solids until they are removed (and of course me sobbing after the dentists verdict).
A photo posted by Clare Nicholas (@emmysmummy1) on
How’s your Summer been so far?
Disclaimer: Our Merlin Annual Passes were provided as part of our Ambassadors role, we’ve been provided with a years worth of family fun.
Related Posts:
Discover more from Emmy's Mummy
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Sounds like you’re keeping the kids busy with lots of fun things to do! We’ve been trying to make the most of our time together as Jamie is a teacher so it’s nice for him to do things too, other than housework and boring grown up stuff. We’ve been swimming, gone to the Sea Life Centre and had days out on our bikes. Two weeks to go! Poor Harry and his tooth, hope he’s coping well until they’re all sorted xx
Sounds like you’ve been having great fun too.
It sounds like you are more than surviving the summer holidays! Wow! Care to adopt me? Xx
LOL happy to
Glad your surviving the summer holidays, I’m off to read your review on kidzania we are off to London in October and it might be somewhere we visit if we have time. Oh no about Harry’s teeth ?
You will all love it if you get the time – you are in there for 4 hours