I have a confession

I am not a fan of the summer holidays.  I know I am not alone in feeling like this but I am also aware it can sound a bit like "I don't like having my children around".  The reality is I LOVE having my kids around but I often feel a little overwhelmed by the idea of occupying them with stimulating, not overly expensive activities for 6 or 7 weeks.  Pile on top of that the fact that I am growing another one (I'm now more than 22 weeks) and that my kids are too young to put to a lot of the summer activities like sports, church clubs or play schemes and I have a lot of time to fill up and limited energy with which to do it!

With this in mind I have decided to make sure we do one "fun" thing (for my eldest this means messy) every day but am ok with the fact that at 3 she can come up with some things to do for herself as long as I can provide a few toys, her little sister loves to join in too, and also for sunny days we have an amazing garden for the kids to play in.

I thought I would share with you the "things" I come up with so if, like me, you are feeling a little overwhelmed I might be able to inspire you to do one or two things.

Today we started the day with our sand and water table, it is the first time we have had it out all summer so the first activity was actually cleaning it ready to be used but the kids enjoyed the basin of bubbly water almost as much as they enjoyed the actual sand and water when it came!

I am also trying to do something with my eldest every afternoon while the little one naps, today we have taken inspiration from this blog and are making some footprint toadstools (although we don't have any paper plates so I cut some shapes out of an empty cereal box instead).  Currently, while I write this blog, the three year old is learning a lesson in patience as we wait for the paint to dry,  It's definitely a lesson in progress.