6 school holiday activity ideas that won't make you want to cry.

Yep, it’s almost that time of year.

When I realised that the school holidays were coming up, I was fairly startled.

I mean, we just got used to the school routine – and now its holiday time again already?

The older my kids get, the more they crave stimulation and each school holidays I have to try and think up ways to keep them busy.

I really love to see them using their hands, using their imaginations, doing things together and not blowing our entire school holidays budget in one day (at the Easter Show).

So here are six genuinely creative school holiday kid’s activities (that you won’t have tried before).

Good luck…

1. Go nuts with the paper craft.

My son told me that lots of kids at his school have been into making paper planes recently, thanks to the movie Paper Airplanes. But there are lots of other paper crafts you can make too.

All you need to do is sit down with the kids, watch some ‘how to’ videos on YouTube and before you know it, the kids will be making paper airplanes, lanterns, flowers, rows of people and a million other things you’ve never even thought of. So stock up on coloured paper which you can buy cheaply at discount stores.

 Just as an FYI, this post is sponsored by Hasbro. But all opinions expressed by the author are 100 per cent authentic and written in their own words.

2. Hold a Board Games Olympics.

We have a pretty impressive collection of board games now that the kids love to play. They are even sticking to my rule of ‘whoever plays it packs it up’ which is great because stepping on hotels that have been left on the ground gets really annoying after a while. Those little buggers are sharp.

To make playing board games more fun, set up a Board Games Olympics competition. Buy a piece of cardboard and write the kids names on it as a chart. Each time they play a game you write down who came first, second and third. Each place gets a reward like choosing an outing or a place to have dinner.

Related: “We took our kids out of school for a year-long ‘holiday’.”

3. Plant a vegetable garden.

I’ve been planning to do this for so long but this school holidays I’m actually going to do it.

Start off by deciding on where you want to start your garden. Dig it all up together, pulling out all the grass and then mixing up the soil with some really good top soil you’ve bought.

Then get those little stakes that you use to label plants and write the kids names on them. They each get their own little patch. Then, just let them decide what they want to plant and watch it all grow.

4. Try washing cars for charity.

Each weekend during the school holidays, take the kids up and down your street and offer to wash cars for money to be donated to charity. This is a great activity you can do together. It teaches kids responsibility and it is lots of messy fun. Choose a warm day if possible because they will get drenched.

Related: “The part of getting my kids ready to go back to school that I dread the most.”

5. Drive somewhere new and choose it randomly off a map.

There are so many interesting places that you can drive to and from in a day. Grab a map of your local area, throw a coin in the air and wherever it lands, that’s where you’ll be visiting that day.

Once you find out your location, Google it and talk about the area, its history and the sorts of things you could do there.

6. Look after pets while others holiday.

I got this idea from my mother-in-law whose dogs recently passed away. She feels she can’t commit to a new pet, so she contacted her local vet and offered her services to look after animals while families go on holidays.

If your kids have been bugging you for a new pet, this could be their audition. They can enjoy looking after a pet for a week or so and learn to be responsible for it – and you’ll be happy because you can hand it back at the end.

And if all else fails, there’s always these rainy day movie classics.

What creative things do you like to do with your kids during the holidays?

Hasbro Games provide families with innovative, fun, friction-free gaming aimed at youngsters who are curious and love to play. Hasbro are world renowned for keeping the whole family entertained with board games, such as Monopoly Junior, Hungry Hippos and Mousetrap.

Hasbro Games have the power to bring families together through competition and fun!

For more information head to http://www.hasbro.com/games/en_AU/