10 Summer Holiday Activities for Children

It’s that point in the summer holidays when the excitement of not having school has started to wear off and the days can feel a little longer. You’ve been to the pool. You’ve watched the films. You’ve made the snacks, planned the playdates and probably heard the phrase “there’s nothing to do” despite the fact that your house is full of things to do.

So, what happens when you’ve exhausted your usual ideas?

Whether you’ve stayed in Dubai for the summer or packed your bags and travelled somewhere new, the holidays are a brilliant opportunity to step away from the usual routine and give children space to explore and try something different.

The good news, too? Not every activity requires a booking, a budget, or a meticulously thought-out schedule.

Here are 10 ideas to help spark some inspiration for the rest of the summer.

1. Let Them Be the Tour Guide

You don't need to travel somewhere completely new to explore. You can give your child the responsibility of becoming the family tour guide for a day.

If you're in Dubai, ask them to choose somewhere they've never visited before, research a few interesting facts and plan the route. If you're travelling, let them take charge of one small part of the day, whether that's choosing a café, finding a landmark or deciding which museum to explore.

They'll practise research, decision-making and communication without it feeling like a lesson.

2. Create a Summer Scrapbook

Summer tends to fly by, so why not give children a way to capture it?

Give them a notebook, scrapbook or even a digital camera and let them document the things that make their summer memorable. They could add photographs, drawings, postcards, tickets, pressed flowers or short stories about their favourite days.

Don't worry about making it Instagram-worthy. The slightly wonky drawings and half-finished pages will probably be the things you treasure most later.

3. Have a Cook-Off

Give your kitchen over to the children and let them create their own dish.

You can let them take the lead by creating a theme, such as breakfast, pizza, dessert, or even "make something using only what's already in the fridge".

Older children can research recipes, measure ingredients and plan their dishes, while younger children can get involved with mixing, decorating and choosing ingredients.

4. Start a Mini-Business

Summer can be the perfect time for children to experiment with an idea of their own.

Perhaps they could create friendship bracelets, design artwork, bake something or make handmade cards. They could then think about how they would package and price their creations and even set up a little stall for family and friends.

Allowing kids to experience what it's like to have an idea, transform it into something practical, and observe how others react to it is the true value. And who knows? At home, you may have a young aspiring entrepreneur.

5. Make Your Own Holiday Olympics

You don't need a sports centre to create a competition.

Set up your own family Olympics with events that can be adapted to your space. Think sock basketball, timed obstacle courses, balancing challenges, paper-plane throwing or even a treasure hunt around the house.

Let the children invent some of the events themselves and create the scoring system. It becomes less about who wins and more about giving them the chance to create something together.

6. Make a Time Capsule

Summer is full of moments that feel ordinary at the time but become memories surprisingly quickly. A favourite snack, a holiday obsession, a friendship, a song they played on repeat or the things they were convinced they would become when they grew up can all feel completely insignificant now but fascinating a few years later.

Creating a summertime capsule gives children a chance to capture who they are right now.

Find a box, decorate it together and let your child decide what goes inside. They could include a photograph, a drawing, a handwritten letter to their future self, their favourite book, a small keepsake, a list of their favourite things or even a prediction about what they think their life will look like in five years.

Then comes the important part: hide it away and choose a date to open it. It could be next summer, when they finish primary school or several years from now.

7. Start a Family Reading Challenge

Summer reading doesn't have to mean sitting quietly with a book for an hour.

Create a family reading challenge that lets everyone choose what they actually want to read. Graphic novels, magazines, comics, audiobooks and children's non-fiction all count.

You could create a shared reading list, swap books with each other or set a challenge to read somewhere unusual—a balcony, a park, under a blanket fort or beside the pool.

8. Invent Your Own Board Game

Give them a piece of cardboard, some paper, dice, counters and whatever craft supplies you have lying around, then let their imagination take over. They could create a race around a jungle, a game where players build their own city, a treasure hunt across an imaginary island or something completely ridiculous that only makes sense to your family.

Once they've created their game, play it together and let them test it. Is it too easy? Too difficult? Can someone win too quickly? What happens if two players land on the same space?

Encourage them to change the rules, redesign parts of the board and try again. Before long, they've gone from having an empty piece of cardboard to designing, testing and improving their very own game.

9. Have a Screen-Free Day

This one might cause a few groans. Pick one day and put the screens away. No tablets, no gaming and no scrolling.

The trick is not to replace the screens with a schedule packed from morning until night. Instead, see what happens when children have to decide what to do for themselves.

Build a den. Draw. Read. Make something. Go outside. Play a game. Talk. Or perhaps spend the first 20 minutes insisting that there is absolutely nothing to do.

Which brings us to number 10...

10. Let Them Be Bored

And finally, perhaps the hardest summer activity of all: do nothing.

In a world where children's calendars can quickly become filled with camps, clubs, activities, playdates and screens, boredom can feel like something parents need to solve.

But what if we didn't?

Boredom gives children something that a packed schedule can't: space.

Space to think. Space to imagine. Space to experiment. Space to discover what they actually enjoy.

When children aren't immediately given an activity, they have to start looking for one themselves. A cardboard box can become a spaceship. The garden can become an expedition. A random collection of toys can become an elaborate game with rules that make absolutely no sense to anyone over the age of ten.

Nord Anglia's Permission to Be Bored campaign explores exactly this idea: that boredom isn't necessarily something to avoid but an important part of childhood that can create space for creativity, independence and imagination. Take a look here: https://permissiontobebored.ae/

Takeaway

The summer holidays do not have to be a competition to see how many activities you can squeeze into six weeks.

Some days might involve exploring somewhere new, trying something you've never done before or getting messy in the kitchen. Other days might involve a book, a cardboard box, a swimming pool and absolutely no plan at all.

The goal is not to keep children entertained at all times; rather, it is to allow them the time, freedom, and confidence to discover what they are capable of doing.