October half term is a challenging one. Its cold and often raining so outdoor activities can be a challenge. Here are a few more half term ideas to keep those little ones entertained next week, with a budget in mind…. free and low cost half term ideas!
Recycled Craft time
Save up your recycling for a few days. Cereal boxes, plastic bottles, toilet roll insides, plastic food containers can all be turned into something really imaginative by the children. Just provide them with some sellotape and colouring pens and away they go. If you wanted to spend a little I have found the crafting range at B&M and Home Bargains is pretty good and is super cheap too.
Geo-caching
A freebie treasure hunt sounds brilliant. Combine a brisk walk out in the country with a hunt for a box of treasure as well. Check out the website Geocaching and pop in a search for your postcode. I have just looked up mine and there are 10 treasure spots hidden near me. All are rated by when they were last found, how difficult they are to find. There are clues and directions to the spot.
Free museums and other places of interest
There are plenty of free museums and the like dotted around. One of our favourite is RAF Hendon, a brilliant place filled with tons of fun and interest for the children. So many hangers full of planes and helicopters. Its an incredible lesson in history. My boys really enjoyed their visit..see here for a full write up on a day out at RAF Hendon. London is full of free places to visit, the science museum is a great one or the natural history museum, although very busy during half term. Maybe get there early!
Cinema
Take a trip to your local council run cinema. I am very lucky to have nearby, one in Welwyn Garden City and then another in Letchworth. Welwyn Garden City is normally our cinema of choice. Tickets are much cheaper than the big cinemas such as Odeon and Cineworld. Make sure you have a zebra card if you’re off to the cinema in Welwyn to ensure cheaper prices and discounts on anything else you might purchase there. Here is a link to the cinema for full listings.
Library
Spend an hour or at the library. They all have brilliant inspiring children’s sections where you can sit and chill and read a book or two. Have a check of your local library website and see if there are any organised activities . There probably are. And we really need to support this service as its in dire risk of closure at the moment with the many government spending cuts. Rant over.
Do some baking
A fail safe way to keep at least one of my children happy for a while. Creating pizza masterpieces from various vegetables is a good one. Or chocolate chip cookies is regularly requested favourite, they love to mix it up and make the mixture into balls. Josh my 6 year old will help out making dinner every night. He loves to cut up an onion or a pepper, he is confident enough with using a knife not to cut himself too.
Go on a nature trail
Now this is something I used to do as a little girl. I would take my book of British wildlife out and try to find as many of the animals and birds as possible and tick them off. Its lots of fun and gets the children and you really watching the fields and hedgerows carefully for new animals. I always love the variety of birds you can spot, hopefully you are lucky enough to spot the red kites and buzzards that now seem a lot of more common than when I was little.
Even the garden can be a wonderful hunting place for bugs, can they find worms, caterpillars, ants, spiders and beetles and know what insect is what? We have resident toad in our garden that appears every once in a whole and caused great excitement for the boys.
I hope this has given you lots of ideas for things to do this half term and that you can save a few pennies at the same time.
2 Responses
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