Please click here to see the first 6 Classic Activities I have listed – here is Part 2
Thanks for checking back in – here are numbers 7 – 12 of my Classic Activities.
7 Head to the Park
Parks are great – they are free and are brilliant stimulation for the kids.
In Germany they encourage outdoor play a lot – in Kindergarten, school and beyond. Playing outdoors improves physical and mental health; encourages playing with peers and allows children to be adventurous.
We have some great parks in our village and we love to try out new parks.
The variety of parks is great and there are sure to be ones with play equipment close by, but others may have climbing areas, wooden climbing frames, water play areas amongst other things.
Some ideas when it comes to parks:
- Create an assault course – using the equipment, benches, trees and paths – set a course and time children. My son enjoyed watching the Ultimate Beastmaster show and he pretends he is competing whilst going around the climbing frames.
- Water parks are great for the hot weather.
- Bring a frisbee
- Bring a kite
- Bring a ball or two
In Germany a lot of parks have table tennis tables, basketball hoops and sometimes football nets nearby or part of them.
Another great activity for older kids and a family is to join a Park Run. These happen all over the world on a Saturday morning, are free to attend and you don’t even need to run – it can be a jog or walk. They are all over the UK and there is currently only one in Frankfurt at Nidda.
https://www.parkrun.com.de/nidda/ – or visit https://www.parkrun.com/countries/ to see if and where Park Run is in your country.
8 Local Events
All year round, but especially over the summer – there are always events going on locally. We have started to search on Facebook, Eventbrite and google searches for events as well as looking out for posters and flyers – as too often we found out about them after the fact.
In Germany there are a lot of little local fairs, fundraising events focused round the local community – from football tournaments (with bouncy castles and activities), street festivals to the local fire station and everything in between.
Face Painting is normally on the agenda!
Recently we went to the MainSpiele – Kids Play event along the river in Frankfurt – more on that in the next post – but this was a great day – all free. When there’s free events on there’s no need to do a paid event that day.
We also recently enjoyed watching the end of the Ironman event in Frankfurt – many people were out to cheer and watch and there was a whole Ironman village to look at.
9 Games Day / Night
For a wetter day or a family evening – we love a good games night. Getting the board games out, the dominoes, the cards or the puzzles.
Basically pile the games up and start playing – it can be great fun, encourages playing together and also keeps the brain active.
Our son loves to know the rules and follow the, and we are trying to use it to learn he can’t always win…. Our favourites are cards games, dominoes, ludo, snakes and ladders and he has been learning how to play chess. One of his best Christmas presents was a box with 80 games in it….
10 Education Challenges
I know it’s the summertime and we don’t want to be pushy parents – but we have found if we make reading, writing and maths fun – our little man loves to get involved.
We do stories nearly every evening – now he is getting into a mini novels, rather than the shorter picture books. He wants to hear what happens next.
He has always loved storytime – so it’s now using that passion to start to read and write himself.
We try from time to time to sit and read a few books at a time curled up on the sofa or lying on the bed.
For older kids setting a challenge of reading a book in a week then coming back together and telling the best things about it is a good way for them to communicate and to learning confidence in presentation.
This can all be linked to rewards or prizes. Workbooks are a great way of learning from home.
11 Baking / Cooking
Baking or cooking is a classic activity to do with kids. Making or decorating cupcakes or cakes, making pancakes, make your own pizza – or even better the pizza base as well.
It doesn’t take a lot of organising except having the ingredients available.
There is so much on YouTube and Pinterest for ideas on what to cook and bake.
My son loves baking chocolate cupcakes and decorating them. We all hold a love for pancakes and we are whisking up a batter mix quite regularly.
12 Local Attractions
Science Museums, Museums, Castles and other local attractions
These places will have a lot of events – some of them free, others which need to be paid for.
Look out for offers though – in the UK there is the National Trust and Heritage England to join.
Many attractions which were reasonably local to us in England had offers – including the Eureka! Children’s Museum and The Magna Centre which both had an offer where once you bought a ticket – you had return access for the year.
In Frankfurt on the last Saturday of every month the museums are free – so we are planning that in for the next few months. See here for details.
And many museums are free for under 18s
What offers are on in your local area?
And these activities don’t include arts and crafts activities, den / fort building, tree climbing, summer clubs and camps, football camps, movie and popcorn nights or the many other options.
So let me know which are your favourites and if there are some which I could try I’d love to hear from you…
Colleen's Family Activities 
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