Ideas to entertain and educate kindy and school kids through the holidays.
Finding the right holiday programmes and activities for your child’s unique personality can be a challenge, particularly over the simmer break when much of Aotearoa seems to shut down for Christmas and much of January. This year, primary schools break up mid-December, and with many parents working, we have the additional dilemma of how to look after our little ones in the lead-up to Christmas.
Creative kids
Photography, dance classes, paper making, fashion design ? the choice is yours. The movie-making scene is big, with basic workshops for younger children and camera courses, scriptwriting and directing for teenagers.
Your local art community centre might have holiday classes in visual arts, such as painting with various media and sculpting. Some get quite creative: design your own puppet, draw cartoons, make soap and jewellery, construct a mini-town out of cardboard boxes, devise a driverless car, or plan a home for the homeless.
Music academies, dance schools and local theatres also cater for children during the holidays. Participants get the opportunity to workshop songs, create props and learn the art of stage performance. Drama programmes will help your child build confidence, improve quick thinking and public speaking, and learn to work in a group.
For something different, check out the Circus Act Holiday Programme, in which children learn techniques used by professional circus performers such as acrobatics, tumbling and juggling. Such workshops help develop motor skills, strength, body agility and endurance.
Sporty types
The YMCA coordinates day programmes designed around sports like gymnastics, trampolines and basketball. Netball clubs run skills workshops. There is soccer at Little Kickers, Grasshopper Soccer and FootballFix. Some organisations offer archery, aerobics, tennis, badminton, tramping, mountain biking and multi-sports.
Techie club
Many companies run STEM workshops (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) such as Lego challenges, Minecraft Modding (making changes to computer code), SCRATCHPAD coding, Budding Scientists programmes, game designing and 3D modelling. You could even check out a server list for some games to play like Minecraft where they can play with their friends whilst letting their creative side out.
Adventure-seekers
Depending on where you live, you may be able to find places that offer all-inclusive adventure camps (transport, accommodation, meals) with activities like surfing,kayaking, bush survival skills and more. Many church youth groups run indoor and outdoor summer camps. Brownies and Girl Guides have age-appropriate camps for girls, while Cubs and Scouts provide experiences for all kids. YMCA in Auckland, Wellington and Canterbury organise a selection of residential camps during the school holidays (with WINZ subsidies available for eligible families).
Nature lovers
There’s no Wi-Fi in the forest, but you will find a better connection there. If you’d like your child to get closer to nature this summer.
Auckland
Auckland Zoo holiday programmes allow school-aged children to become a zookeeper for a day. Junior Keepers get to work with real zookeepers, helping to clean, feed and care for the animals. They also explore behind the scenes and enter some animal enclosures.
Butterfly Creek close to Auckland Airport has its version of the Junior Keeper, with its usual activities of monitoring, caring for and playing with the animals, but it also includes a train ride and other activities.
Most pony clubs and horse stables offer all-day activities during the school holidays, including caring for the horses and taking riding lessons. Check your local farm schools, city councils and nature schools to see whether they run holiday programmes: they usually include a range of forest hikes, scavenger hunts, fire pit cooking, playing in the mud, bird watching and mini-beast spotting.
Some organisations and city councils might offer gardening or tree planting experiences.
Holiday programmes that focus discovering and learning about the environment are a popular holiday option ? particularly in summer.
Wellington
Wellingon Zoo offers a drop-off programme for kids from five to 12 years old. Children get to meet animals, learn from specially-trained Zoo staff and be inspired about animals and conservation, all while having fun getting stuck into exciting activities.
Staglands Wildlife reserve in the scenic Akatarawa Valley near Upper Hutt offers a two-hour Park Ranger experience. Go inside enclosures and get up close to a wide variety of animals, learn about their welfare, behaviour, health and how they promote a happy lifestyle for them. Help feed a wide variety of animals including horses and kune kune pigs and young lambs or calves, handle a variety of small animals and assist with routine halter training.
Most pony clubs and horse stables offer all-day activities during the school holidays, including caring for the horses and taking riding lessons. Check your local farm schools, city councils and nature schools to see whether they run holiday programmes: they usually include a range of forest hikes, scavenger hunts, fire pit cooking, playing in the mud, bird watching and mini-beast spotting.
Christchuch
Willowbank Wildlife Reserve runs a Junior Keeper school holiday programme for children aged 10-14 years old, offering behind-the-scenes experience into life as a Keeper; work alongside one of the professional keepers to help with the feeding and watering of animals and birds as well as cleaning their enclosures.
Orana Wildlife Park offers year-round learning experiences outside the classroom from Year 1 to 13, and stay tuned for any holiday-specific events.
Send your kids to Antarctica! Well, the next best thing. The International Antarctic Centre runs Antarctic Academy Programmes where children discover the littleblue penguins, ride the H?gglund, find out how to survive in Antarctica, go exploring around the centre and more.
Most pony clubs and horse stables offer all-day activities during the school holidays, including caring for the horses and taking riding lessons. Check your local farm schools, city councils and nature schools to see whether they run holiday programmes: they usually include a range of forest hikes, scavenger hunts, fire pit cooking, playing in the mud, bird watching and mini-beast spotting.
Boredom busters
If you’re at home with the children, here are a few fun ideas to help you fill the summer break:
Let them make their own Christmas presents: artworks, home-baked cookies, painted stone paperweights. For gift wrapping, simply collect ordinary boxes or buy a roll of brown paper, then let the kids go mad with paints, glue, coloured paper or collages.
Go strawberry picking. Remember to take mud shoes, hats and lots of sunscreen.
On a rainy day, teach the children a skill: how to thread a needle, sew on a button, or darn a sock.
Become a tourist in your own city. Climb on a bus and visit the art gallery, the city centre, the local market, important landmarks.
Make food together and have a picnic in the backyard, on the kitchen floor, or at the local park.
Do outdoor painting: hang up an old sheet on the clothesline or the fence, fill a spray bottle with diluted paint or food colouring and let your children spray-paint the sheet or slap it with fly swatters dipped in paint.
Pitch a tent on the deck or make one out of chairs and large bath towels.
