Summer holidays – Top Tips for Fun & Money Saving summer holidays

Summer Holidays Woo Hoo

Summer holidays are here. I feel a bit excited to spend lots of quality time with my boys, to go on holiday and to not do the school run!! And long may this heat wave continue with a little bit of rain please to nourish the fields and crops and flowers.

We are off on holiday at the beginning of August so we have some time before and afterwards to fill with activity. And it can’t cost the earth.

Here are my Summer Holiday Ideas

Go to a festival.

I wrote a #40thingb440 list that included go to a festival. And we are going to Standon Calling.  I am on the press promotional team so we get free press passes to the whole weekend. Its a family focused festival and we are all so excited. 1) to see George Ezra and Paloma Faith, 2) to futuristic theme, I will dress up this year 3) to see Goldfrapp 4) to camp (not sure I am excited about this?). If you want tickets click here, there are plenty left. Day tickets too if you don’t fancy camping. I will be posting next week about our camping/festival prep.

Use Tesco Clubcard vouchers.

Use your clubcard vouchers wisely. We might visit Paradise park.  This usually costs £71 for a family of 5 but is just £28.40 in ClubCard vouchers as they are worth 4 times their value.  Longleat is very cool and is £45 in vouchers rather than online price of £121, we went maybe 3 years ago and loved it. I might also exchange a few vouchers into Pizza Express and the vouchers convert into 4 times their value!!

Swimming

This is the activity for today. As you will probably know I have 3 boys. And most days they disagree on what they all want to do. Jack will normally go with the flow.  But Dylan and Josh will always disagree. We have lot of lovely local council run swimming pools nearby including Hatfield, Hitchin & Letchworth. All offer loyalty schemes to encourage regular use and Hitchin & Letchworth have indoor and outdoor pools. A family swim off peak costs £12 at Hitchin.

Exercise of any kind

I am currently looking into the football schools offered by Cambridge United where both boys are signed to their academy. Also the Knebworth football fun weeks with Future Sport. These offer 4 days of football and entertainment for a great value price, normally around £10 per day. Suitable for both boys and girls with great coaching and fun for the children.

RSPB or National Trust locations.

We have just joined the RSPB as a family. I love my birds and wildlife and love to do my bit to help them out the best way I can. Its contribution based, ie you choose how much of a donation to make. And for the donation I got a load of books, a hedgehog (not real), bug catchers and plenty of info on fun activities for the kids. We will be paying Rye Marshes a visit during the holidays, flashing our membership cards to get in for free. National trust is also great for families but I’m not joining both!

On to the free stuff

Splash parks

We love a splash park and yeah, there are lots located nearby. We have great ones in Baldock, Letchworth, Stevenage and St. Albans. Splash parks are free and so much fun, you’ve got a good few hours of entertainment there. Why not go with your friends so you can have a chat and relax. Children are almost always happier in groups of friends;-)

Nature walks

You can find nature anywhere from the middle of a city to living in the sticks. I was at Finsbury park station last week and saw a fox run across platform 8;-) Go out walking and look for nature. Tell your children what the nature is, or learn together. Try to name the trees, flowers, birds, animals, insects. All my boys love doing this and we are fortunate to live near lots of field and beautiful country walks.

Get creative with printouts and recycling stuff.

Disney do a great range of printables which i recently discovered at #printingdory event with Disney and Epson. This is new to me….and what a great freebie idea to keep the children amused for hours. There is origami, pictures, models from all the films. I highly recommend you take a look. I am also VERY lucky to have received an Epson ecotank printer.  This is a very cool (have I just described a printer as cool? yes!) and means printer is no longer a traumatic stress about running out of ink as the ecotank includes enough ink to print up to 4,000 pages in black and 6,500 pages in colour:-) Also collect recycling for a week and use it to be creative. Cereal boxes, plastic bottles, delivery boxes, all can be turned into monsters, castles, a knight costume??

Take a trip to the beach

My favourite beaches ever are in this country. I am from Cornwall, where I know you can never guarantee weather, but there are stunning beaches there. I adore Porthcurnow and Sennon. Longrock and Marazion are right near to where I am from in Penzance and are beautiful with the best view of Mounts Bay and St. Micheals Mount. Stay in the UK if you cant afford a foreign holiday, go camping and camp in West Cornwall near the beach. No issues with crazy Euro-pound exchange rates there. Although some like to think Cornwall is a different country 😉

Go on a treasure hunt.

Again these can be found free online just go a google search for Free treasure hunt printables. We did one of these in Penzance a few years ago on cooler summer holiday day. We walked around 5 miles and discovered all sort of new things about the town I lived in for 18 years.

Go for a run or a bikeride.

We’ve all got bikes and love to go out for a long bike ride. Also our active family like to go out running. Why not try a park run. A timed and free event for anyone to join and run a 5km around a local park.

There you go..tons of ideas to fill those weeks and weeks of summer holidays. If you have more freebie ideas please do comment below. I’d love to hear of creative and new ideas.