Every single year parents are faced with the fact that their children don't have to go to school for just under three months. It's often a happy time, but not one that comes without worries over how to keep kids entertained and how not to lose sanity with them pestering you for something to do for 10 weeks.

Try to sit down with your kids as soon as the summer vacation from school starts. This probably won't be straight away as they'll want around two days to reel from the fact school's out. Once they've got all that energy out of their systems get a sketchbook and start writing down what everyone wants to do. Try having a page of ideas for a summer-long project (e.g. digging a pond for the garden or redecorating the kid's rooms). This should be something big that they're not going to finish in one day, and preferably something that can be added to, like a mural on one of their walls or building boats to race across the pond.

Ask your kids to tell you what they learned at school over the past year. Is there a particular project that grabbed their attention, or are they particularly enthralled by one theme? For example, take them to a museum if they're interested in dinosaurs and build future projects around them. Perhaps one day make papier mache volcanoes and mountain landscapes and another day go shopping for dinosaur figurines. Buy a glass painting set so they can have jars to keep their dinosaur figurines in, or simply laminate thick paper that they've drawn their favorite dinosaur on for use as a home made place mat. You can even incorporate things like this into mealtimes – bring them shopping with you for pizza bases and their favorite toppings and tell them to make their pizza look like the face of a dinosaur; the scarier the better.

Of course you won't want your kids in the house all the time and they're going to want to see their friends. Instead of just having them play in the back garden all summer, why not try and arrange a weekly outing with other parents? Think of somewhere inexpensive to go (the park, the swimming pool, the beach, up a huge hill) and ask other parents if they would be willing to take it in turns to take the group each week. Share the responsibility between two parents if the group is large. What this should mean in the end is that once a month you take the kids out, but the other three weeks you have a day to yourself while other parents do it.

There's a high chance you're an extremely busy parent and just because your children have three months off from school, that doesn't mean you have that same time from work too. Ask your child minder to incorporate your child's project into their time together, or organize a separate project for them, that they can tell you about in the evening. Summer vacation doesn't have to spell stress and children who are bored to tears.

Stan Tian

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