This years Good Childhood report highlighted that spending the all important ‘quality time’ with their families was a really import factor in children’s happiness. To help families find cheap fun activities to do together The Children’s Society has launched a great resource, Unplugged, with ideas for projects from making an interplanetary mobile to designing your own Olympics. Each activity has a key letting you see at a glance if it is for indoors or outside, how complicated it is and roughly how long it will take to make it easy for you to find something appropriate. It’s a really fun, colourful site with beautiful images and lots of downloadable resources to go with the activities so do go and check it out if you find yourself at a loose end and look out for more activities being added each week.
Apart from creating Unplugged, The Children’s Society are a leading children’s charity (who also function as a drug addiction treatment centre), working across the country to combat childhood poverty and adolescent neglect. They work with runaways, young people at risk of being sexually exploited, children affected by parental drug and alcohol misuse, disabled children, young refugees, young carers, children in care and more. They lobby government to change the systems that keep children in poverty or subject them to neglect. All really important work so do support them is you can.
One of the companies that support the Unplugged project is the publisher Bloomsbury who have kindly donated this week’s giveaway prize, two copies of Unbored: The essential field guide to serious fun. Described as:
The book every modern child needs. Brilliantly walking the line between cool and constructive, it’s crammed with activities that are not only fun and doable but that also get kids standing on their own two feet.
As well great activities like ‘make a fake exhaust for your bike so it sounds like you’re revving up a motorcycle’ the book also includes Q&As with inspiring grown-ups, extracts from classic novels, lists of useful resources and best ever lists like the top clean rap songs, stop-motion movies or books about rebellion.
If you’d like to be in with a chance of winning a copy just leave me a comment sharing your favourite childhood summer activity and record your entry in the rafflecopter widget along with any additional entries for tweeting etc. The giveaway will run until Monday 19th August 2013.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
laura banks says
building dens in the fields near where i lived
Hanging out in the woods next to our house climbing trees
Playing with my My Little Ponies in the garden! I would set up ‘camp’ around the rockery and fish pond – the rockery would be the mountains and the fish pond would be the lake!
Skateboarding round the estate
I used to love going for long bike rides with my brother
hopscotch! xx
Riding my bike – I’d be gone for hours!
going to the seaside and building sand castles
Going to the beach!
Definitely creating adventures with obstacles that were burning pits or dragon caves!
Gymnastic’s
Building dens in our back garden with all the patio furniture and a load of my mum’s tablecloths.
Clinbing trees and swimming
loved neighbourhood water fights!! No super-soakers in those days though…washing up liquid bottles for us with the odd water balloon thrown in!
Making rose petal perfume and then setting up a stall to ‘sell’ it!
Super soaker wars in the woods with my dad! Great fun!
Walking over to “Crystals” to swim, it was a pond formed from the slag heaps. We used to take our jam butties wrapped up in a Warbies bread wrapper and a bottle of water. We’d spend all day there… happy days!
Fruit picking and riding my bike,i used to be gone all day!
I used to love going to the marshes and jumping the creeks
Going to the beach and building sandcastles!
playing in the garden, doing cartwheels and handstands
Climbing up the cherry tree at the end of our garden with a book and sitting on my favourite branch to read it.
Making mud pies was a favourite activity when I was very young.
Going to the beach and building sandcastles!
playing football
playing tennis
Wild Goose Chases
Riding my bike.
Making little fairy gardens in saucers, or little gardens and houses in the grass for my toys.
making dens
hunting through rock pools with my brother and sister, mum and day, on the beaches of Cornwall, marvelling at the crabs, urchins and sea anenomes we caught, and finishing the day with soft vanilla cones, sitting in the sand dunes looking out to sea, magical memories
Roller Skating
butterfly catching
roaming around
Making dens and playing on my bike.
swimming in the ocean
Riding little ride on toys and trikes into paddling pools
Picnic in the park
Collecting shells at the beach
Swinging in the tyre swing in the back garden 🙂
Running wild through the woods with jy mates
Camping in my friends garden
finding new places to go on my mountain bike
Camping in the woods
Picnics and fishing in the park
I used to love climbing trees or looking in ponds for frogs, etc.
playing 4040
Drama Camp
we used to play hide and seek within a few streets.
I loved going for walks.
My favourite childhood summer activity was going to play in the local paddling pool, and going exploring in the woods!
This prize is brilliant. I used to like to find roman pottery and glass bottles in the woods. It was everywhere, never kept any, just forgot it and went for a go on the homemade tree swing.
Swimming and still is 🙂
Swimming
bull dog
Hide and seek (I still play it when I get the biscuits out ha ha ha)
playing on my swing in the garden
Building a den whether it be in the garden from household items or in a wood from natural materials
Cricket
Loved going fruit picking
We lived outside a field with woods at the top of them and we would love making a den in the Woods and living out pretend adult lifes.
I loved making dens in the back garden with my little brother 🙂
Playing street games
Playing on a swing 🙂
Playing on the beach with a bucket and spade
swimming or when it was wet, reading
Painting and drawing, or water fights when it was hot.
Making dens in the garden 🙂
Going to the seaside.
climbing up trees
whats the time mr wolf, kirby or lemonade game
Making camps in the woods 🙂
making camps ad tree climbing.
Climbing Trees
Climbing trees
Camping in the back garden!
Cycling.
roller blading
Playing cops and robbers on our bikes
we used to go on long bike rides through the countryside with our dad
football bike rides
Making ‘dens’ – we could do it all summer and each one would be bigger and better than the last!
I liked going bike riding 🙂
Playing in the paddling pool in the garden
stream jumping and apple scrumping
Riding my bike
Going to the park 🙂
I was happy when I was in or on the water – swim, paddle, sail
climbing trees 🙂
Reading books outside :}
Going to the beach and reading my book! 🙂
Reading or rollerskating
playing championship manager
I used to love playing house in my wooden ‘wendy house’ in my back-garden. I would stay in there for hours, even making my mum bring my dinner out there for me!
Our yearly street BBQ! Was always so much fun! 🙂
Stream hopping and bug collecting 😎
reading a good book
Playing badminton in the garden
playing football with friends in the field til it was so dark you couldn’t see the football –eventually we finished when someone cried because it hit them in the face!
Making Dens & drawing with chalk on the paving 🙂
swimming