Summer Holiday Things to do with Small Children when you have Older Ones too!

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I have 2 girls with 5 years between them and as my eldest is now 10, I’m starting to find that she doesn’t want to do the same thing as my toddler wants to do! It’s a strange feeling as usually in the holidays, I book a few places to go and its mostly for Mia with Lottie tagging on doing bits she can manage as and when. However now Lottie can go on most things and get involved in most activities, I’m finding it harder to keep both of them busy! So how to you plan summer holiday things to do?

When you’re planning the holidays, especially the summer holidays, you might want to plan things out with ‘break days’ in between (more for you than the kids!). If you need help organising your summer holidays, I have you covered already so don’t worry! But how do you keep small children entertained while keeping up with an older child? If you’re looking for Toddler Friendly things to do, Happy Time Blog have you covered!

Summer Holiday Things to do:

Soft Play

Now I’ll be honest and say I’m not a huge fan of soft play, but I also have to admit that now Lottie is old enough to go and play with Mia helping her, I can spend more time sat down watching them than having to follow Lottie around the place to ‘help’! It also means you can go with other mums and dads and may even manage a coffee or 2! A lot of soft play centres do deals where you can pay for a block of sessions, and this helps massively to help the budgeting side of the holidays!

Adventure Park / Farm Visit

We are lucky enough to have a fab adventure park about 20 minute’s drive from us. Robin Hood’s Wheelgate Park is amazing as its literally a whole day out with pretty much everything you can think of inside. We spend hours in the place! There’s a farm, rides, soft play, bouncy castles, water park and huge play area as well as plenty of cafes and picnic areas too. It’s so good and we have had annual passes in the past which allows unlimited entry for a whole year. It’s such good value and again, get them earlier in the year or when there’s a deal on and you could spend most of the summer hols there, costing you next to nothing!

We also have a lovely farm nearby which is only £4 each to get in. It’s only small but has a lovely play area and sand area so you could probably eke out a couple of hours at the most. Great for when you only have half a day or the weathers rubbish!

Play Area

Sometimes a good old fashioned play area and picnic is what’s needed. A free day out and you can just let the kids go and do their thing. Again, it’s easier now that Lottie can do most things (apart from the swings) herself, so I don’t have to hover over her ready to help when she needs it. My kids love a good car picnic, which is basically what happens when you live in the UK and can’t rely on the weather being good!

Library

Lastly, another place that both children love is the library. We tend to go once a fortnight as both girls absolutely love books! They usually have some kind of reading challenge going on over the summer so Mia loves getting involved in that too! Again, another thing to do when you haven’t got much time but it’s a trip out to my 2!

Feli Family blog has some great ideas too, so make sure you go and have a look!

I hope that helps give you some ideas of where to take your small children when you have older ones too! It can be really tough to keep everyone entertained but don’t forget that they will probably want ‘down time’ too so keep a few ‘break days’ in there!