25 Summer holiday activities that WON'T break the bank and WILL be educational! – Mummascribbles

The Summer holidays are well and truly here! Are you already worried about how you are going to fill the time? What activities you are going to do? I have just the answer for you, and it is in the form of this bumper packed post! Here are 25 cheap educational Summer holiday activities to do with the kids – plus there is a FREE download activity pack at the end!

Bug Hunt

This is one of my boys’ favourite things to do. You can do it in the garden, and if you haven’t got a garden, you can do it in the local park. Just find a stash of twigs, a loose brick, or a bit of large log, then turn it over and see what you can find! Will you see a beetle? A woodlouse? A worm? Be sure to scroll down to the end where you can grab your bug hunt checklist in my FREE activity bundle!

Sink or float

This is a good one, although sometimes it can get messy! Grab a large bowl (we use the washing up bowl that we don’t actually use to wash up), and fill it with water. Then go around the house and find things that you can put into water. Ask your child whether they think it will sink or float, get them to drop it in and find out, and then record their findings. You can get your hands on my template in my activity bundle down the bottom!

Den building inside

Oh Den building. I mean in reality it’s a bit of a nightmare, but it can also be educational. Because it takes quite a bit of effort to create a den. To get the chairs positioned the right distance apart, and to get the blankets and sheets balanced so that it doesn’t all just collapse. See – educational!

Den building outside

And of course, the whole balance and agility testing can also happen with den building outside. Can they find big enough sticks? Will they balance them in the right way to support it. There is your educational aspect right there!

Visit a museum

We are surrounded by museums all over the Country, and many of them are either free, or entrance is for a minimal donation. As long as you are well prepared and make a packed lunch (because we know the cafes tend to charge a fortune), then it’ll be a pretty cheap day out and will be full of educational value.

Ice digging

This is an activity that we love in our house but make sure you prepare it way before mentioning that you’ll be doing it!

You will need a small plastic toy (we always use dinosaurs), and you will need to pop it in a plastic pot or a bowl and cover it with water. Then simply pop it in the freezer and wait for it to freeze up (that’s the planning in advance bit, because the first time I did this with the boys, I didn’t quite realise how long it would take to freeze and they were badgering me for ages).

Once it is fully frozen, grab a metal spoon and get them to dig away at the ice to reveal the hidden element! This is a great one to do if you have something to get on with, because it can take them a while to chip away at that ice! I suggest a cuppa and a magazine personally!

Dinosaur fossil hunting

We recently did this at a half term science session and they both absolutely loved it. Most of us have toy dinosaurs in the house (we have loads), and all you need is sand, a tray, and a paintbrush. Pop the sand in the tray, bury the dinosaurs, and get them to use their brushes to find the dinosaurs. Once they have discovered them all, do they know the names of them? You can test them and expand their knowledge of any unknown ones. I have created a dinosaur sheet that you can grab in my activity bundle at the end of this post!

The Diet Coke and Mentos eruption!

Not one for the faint hearted but the kids LOVE this! Grab a bottle of diet coke and a pack of Mentos and drop them in! The gas that is released by the Mentos creates an eruption that pushes most of the liquid up and out of the bottle like a volcanic eruption!

You will need to drop all of the Mentos in at the same time (I recommend about 7). You can do this by creating a tube with paper, pop the Mentos in and block the end with your finger. When you are ready, pop the tube on top of the bottle and move your finger. They should all fall in at the same time. Then the important bit…RUN AWAY! Also note that they won’t only want to see this once. So maybe grab two bottles of soda and two packs of Mentos! If you want to explain the serious science behind this experiment, you can check out this post.

If you want to do this experiment on a smaller scale, you can also mix a bit of vinegar and baking soda and it’ll have the same effect in a smaller proportion!

Make paper boats

You will need to get your craft on for this (and I am rubbish at craft), but making paper boats and then seeing whose floats the best is loads of fun for the kids and teaches them at the same time! You can find a perfect paper boat making tutorial here.

Make ice lollies

We all love an ice lolly to cool us down on a hot day, but doesn’t the ice cream man charge a small fortune now?! Make your own and save some pennies. The kids can get involved too as it’s so simple. You can either use fruit juice, squash, or blended fruit. If you don’t have ice lolly moulds then you can just use ice cube trays to make mini ones. Pour the juice in, pop in some little lolly sticks, and then pop them in the freezer. In an hour or so, you’ll have some ice lollies to enjoy and the kids will have watched them go in runny and come out frozen. Then comes your explanation of how water freezes!

What’s The Time Mr Wolf?

Sometimes we forget the fun of the games that we used to play in the playground. What’s the time Mr Wolf is a real popular one in our house at the moment and as it encourages them to think about spacing and counting, as well as the time, it is a superbly educational game to play!

Set up an obstacle course

Get their minds working out how to manoeuvre around things by setting up an obstacle course. This can be done either inside or outside, but have a look around and see what you can use. Boxes, steps, blankets to crawl under, play tunnels to crawl through, hula hoops to step through and skipping ropes to jump over, are just a few ideas! They will be learning how to manoeuvre themselves and work out ways around the obstacles!

Bake cupcakes

I admit that I always find this pretty stressful, but baking cupcakes is brilliant for their minds to start dealing with measuring quantities! If you can put up with the potential mess, it’s a great activity that will hopefully result in some tasty treats at the end of it. And don’t forget to lick the spoon!

Make a mud kitchen

I would love to have an actual mud kitchen in our garden but they are SO EXPENSIVE! Instead, I grab the tuff tray and make one up in that. Get them to help you find things around the garden – dig a bit of soil up, add some leaves and sticks, get them to add some water and then mix it all up. You are using their creativity and their brains to work out their best ingredients for mud pies! I grabbed a bunch of kitchen equipment from the pound shop for them to use if you don’t want them using your own set!

Write a school holiday diary

So often in the school holidays, children forget how to read and write as well as they do in school. I know with Zach that if I was to sit him down for some formal writing skills practise in the holidays, he would be horrified. But I know that if I asked him to write a Summer holiday diary, he would love it. Let them be free with their writing so it doesn’t feel like a chore to them, and they can use words and pictures if they so wish!

Create a happy jar

Do we ever sit and ask what makes our children REALLY happy? This is a lovely idea to find out. You can use the templates in my FREE activity bundle for this so that you can keep it to look back on. They just need to cut out the hearts, fill them in with their happy thoughts, and then stick them onto the jar. They will be using their brains for their happy thoughts, and using their craft skills to cut and stick. Of course, you can also use an actual jar and store them all in there 🙂

Create a vegetable patch

You’d be best off starting this at the very start of the holidays so that they can tend to them and watch them grow. Grab a cheap herb plant pot from your local DIY/Garden Centre, grab the seeds, a bit of soil, and plant away. Good things to plant are salad leaves, radishes, spring onions, runner beans, baby carrots and beetroot.

Colouring in

Don’t take the simple staff for granted. For a bit of quiet downtime, colouring in is the perfect activity. It aids their motor skills, improves their hand eye coordination, and also their planning skills, to name but a few benefits.

Get the paints out

For similar reasons as above, painting is fantastically educational for a child, simply because it gets their brains creating and expressing – and most of us already have the equipment laying around at home.

Go on a nature walk

Nature surrounds us all no matter where we live! If you are by the Countryside, the Sea, or in town – you will be guaranteed that you will find something!

Go pond dipping

If you are near to an RSPB Centre, or somewhere else that has this kind of thing, sometimes you’ll find that they run pond dipping sessions throughout the holidays. If not, then head down to your nearest pond (assuming you have one), take a net (we got ours dead cheap), and see what they can find. We have learnt that the best way of dipping is to pop the net in the water, swish if back and forth a few times, and then swish it out! We always find loads of pond skaters in ours.

Visit yours or the other half’s work

How often are your kids wanting to go to your workplace? Take them for a quick visit to see where you work and what you do. Let them sit at your desk, have a chat with your colleagues, even do a bit of work for you! Pure education and they will love being in Mummy or Daddy’s work!

Go for a bus or train ride

Sounds too simple right? But kids LOVE public transport and it is educational for them to learn how to deal with it correctly. How to use any escalators properly, how to board a train or bus safely, how to buy tickets, etc. They get a fun ride and you can play I Spy on route!

Rain collecting

I mean we have had plenty of rain and there is bound to be more! If you are stuck indoors and it is pouring outside, grab a bucket, or even a bowl, pop it outside, and see how long it takes to fill up. You could do this on different days, to compare how long it takes to fill up when there is light rain compared to heavy rain!

Play board games

Junior Monopoly is a good one, because it teaches the art of buying, selling and dealing with money that they can’t actually spend! Junior Cluedo uses their investigative skills. And things like Hungry Hippos and Pop Up Pirate are great for counting! Grab those board games out and have some fun.

So there you go. There are your 25 cheap educational Summer holiday activities! I hope you enjoy them and have a fab Summer 🙂

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