It’s great being able to spend lots of time with the boys in the summer holidays but after six weeks of keeping them entertained my bank balance is feeling the strain. Of course there are lots of free ways thing to do with kids but by this point in the summer we’ve pretty much exhausted them. So far some of my favourite cheap activities have been:
- Cooking – well if you have to do it anyway you may as well get the kids involved too! Of course they don’t see it as a chore and because it takes twice as long with their help you can easily while away most of an afternoon just getting dinner ready. Baking cakes has also gone down well.
- The park – thank goodness the weather has been pretty good for a change this year and we’ve been able to have lots of trips to the park for bike riding and generally blowing off steam.
- Books in bed day – after Hubs heads to work we collect our favourite books from around the house and piles into my bed (with important provisions like drinks and biscuits) and take it in turns to pick what we read and talk about what we like about it.
- Gardening – this year we’ve grown our own loganberries which went down a storm, the boys have their own sunflowers and we’re waiting for courgettes, potatoes and apples. The kids love helping and ask all kinds of interesting questions about how things grow.
I’ve had a simple system for planning our summer:
Recently our repertoire of activities has been expanded by VoucherCodes.co.uk, the UK’s number 1 voucher site, who gave us a budget and asked us to try out some of their vouchers in an effort to cut the cost of entertaining the family as part of their Schools Out for Summer campaign. It’s not a site I’ve used before but I was pleasantly surprised by the huge range of products and service they covered. There were codes for two for one entry to lots of local attractions, big discounts at loads of restaurants and even reductions for big stores like Amazon or Game.
We chose to get a 20% discount on family tickets at our local cinema and took the boys to Monsters University, T’s first movie on the big screen. We had planned lunch out afterwards but unfortunately my laptop had ground to a halt the night before so instead I had to spend the afternoon trying (not terribly successfully) to get that fixed so we’ll be using our 30% off at Ask this weekend instead and I may have to check out what deals they have on computers too. So if you’re feeling the pinch too I’d definitely recommend checking out VoucherCodes to make your budget go further for the rest of the summer.
That’s a great idea. For the first time this year we haven’t had a proper holiday so I panicked and overbooked activities for the 6 weeks. Now it’s all gone so fast I’m wishing I’d booked less and chilled out more. And I’m dreading the credit card bill!
Oh look I’ve commented already! Gah! Well now I’ve pinned it too 😉 #pinitparty
Did T enjoy the cinema? We haven’t taken W yet but I think he would love it. What did you see?
Ooh Monsters University – I want to see that, did the kids like it? My two are a bit reticent cinema-wise…is it scarey?!? Thanks so much for linking up to the Parenting Pin it Party this week as well 😀
Great ideas – I love the books in bed day one most – we shall try that