The holidays are very swiftly approaching – this is my youngest’s last week of primary school (eeek!) – and so I thought I’d give you a few tips for keeping children occupied over the big six week break.
There are some great websites and apps out there to help…
Day Out With The Kids (DOWTK)
I first discovered the “Day Out With The Kids” website when my boys were very little. It’s great for picking out the sort of place that kids love but that you might not find on most tourist information websites – like play parks, soft play centres and woods to explore – all over the country. It’s got all the other more obvious things you’d expect to find too – like museums, child-friendly galleries, activity centres and theme parks.
Day Out With The Kids is a website only – you don’t have to worry about downloading an app or anything – just open your browser and go to www.dayoutwiththekids.co.uk
TripAdvisor
To use TripAdvisor, you can either download their app from your app store, or go to the website: www.tripadvisor.co.uk. The bit I find most useful on their website is the “Things to Do” section. It takes people’s reviews of various things you can do in a place and ranks them, so you get a “Top things to do in wherever” – as chosen by ordinary people who’ve actually been there. That means you sometimes get recommendations that are a bit off the beaten track.
Geocaching
If you know children (or grown-ups for that matter!) who are fond of treasure hunts or hide-and-seek, geocaching could be just the thing to get them out and about this summer. A “geocache” is a physical container that’s been hidden outside, that you can hunt out using the “Geocaching” app – just search for “Geocaching” in your app store, it’s free to play. There are literally millions of geocaches, hidden all over the world. You get a map to follow to find the right spot, then you have to hunt around to find the actual box when you get there – just like a treasure map.
Once you’ve found the box, there’s a log book for you to sign and often some other bits and pieces for you to look at – then you put the container back and can go hunting for the next one! It’s surprisingly addictive! (There’s a premium version of the app that you can sign up for that lets you search for “premium” geocaches as well – these are ones where you have a puzzle to solve before you can find the coordinates. I’ve never tried the premium service, so I can’t tell you whether it’s worth it or not, but at the moment it costs £30.99 for a year.)
Anyway, that’s it for me for now. Keep an eye out for my email tomorrow morning to find out all about our Next Steps on Your PC, Laptop, Tablet or Smartphone books. See you at 11am.