10 ideas for keeping teens busy during summer holidays

10 Ideas For Keeping Teens Busy During Summer Holidays

2023 Summer Holidays Is Here

The summer holidays are about to begin and/or underway and with them the challenge for some parents to keep their children occupied. A perfect way I found to keep my child occupied was using arts and craft, allowing them to be free with creativity – Your child’s mind is so powerful and needs to be allowed to flourish. We have a perfect product that lets your child choose whether to make badges/keyring/magnets and even medals! – Just follow the link here – Badge Making Bundle.

To help with creation of badges, we recommend a free website called Canva – Allows you to create to your hearts content.

Grandparents are not always willing to entertain their teenage grandchildren, especially as the latter are sometimes reluctant to go to their home. In short, parents need to encourage their children to spend more time outdoors, away from the screens or doing productive activities inside such as art and crafts – activity found here.

In fact, we know exactly what our teenager will be doing this holiday season:

– sleeping in, nothing against it, it is necessary to recover from the year but getting up at noon for a month, no way!

– spend time on social media, TikTok, Snapchats, Facebook, Instagram…

– watch TV series, youtubers’ videos, play with console or on his/her computer

– see friends

– -staying up until he/she falls asleep online if we haven’t restricted access to the internet!

In short, this kind of holiday may be interesting, but it is not really healthy, nor very sporty, nor very productive. According to us, parents, it is not very productive at all!

So, you’re looking for something interesting to do in the summer of 2023?

First of all, you should:

– Plan your holidays with your child

– Think about a timetable

– Don’t forget about free time and being bored

– Let your child flourish with new creative development activities!

It’s important to think of creative ideas that your child would like to do. By finding these out, you can rekindle your relationship and find out what your child likes.

The “family holiday” period is important for everyone. It is worth deciding on it together. You may find that your kids want to go camping, for example.

Whatever you decide, these family holidays do not have to be complicated or expensive to become unforgettable happy moments.

An unstructured break followed by structured activities

A “relaxed” week after school is beneficial for your teenager. It’s important to let your kid know that you would like him or her to unwind and take some time off from school work. Your teenager needs an opportunity to relax, so make it happen. You can agree with your child that they will not take on major projects during this week.

Structured time to keep your children occupied during this  summer

The age of eleven to fourteen is not the easiest time for a teenager. They can’t work yet, and they think that a summer camp or a leisure centre is for children. So it’s important they find structured activities that seem challenging enough, but not for little kids, with some trade-offs such as a reasonable wake-up time, and a reasonable  amount of screen time.

Here are some suggestions for structured activities

A sports camp or sport training course

If your teen is into a particular sport all year round, whether it’s football, rugby, dance, skating, swimming or tennis, there are often school holiday programmes that allow kids to take part in the sport they love. From 2 hours to a whole day over one or two weeks, sports camps are often very popular, especially as kids  will be meeting up with friends with whom they can organise their evenings or the rest of their holidays at home.

Doing crafts

Why not introduce your child to badge and key ring making …. For a very affordable price, a badge machine can help your child create custom-printed badges, magnets, key rings, pocket mirrors, and more – See our full range of products here to get an idea for the sorts of things your child could get up to.

They can even sell them at the next garage sale to generate pocket money with the burden on the parents bank!

ebadges offers different packs that include everything needed to discover this manual activity.

Keep your teen busy with small jobs

If your teenager needs a little money, some neighbours will be willing to help out with activities such as walking their dog, helping in the garden, helping a young family, fixing the computer or installing new applications if your teenager knows how.

Working in the summer, even for only a week, can be a very rewarding experience for a teenager. He or she  may resist the idea of a summer job, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea.

Whether it’s paid or unpaid, it will allow them to use talents they didn’t know they had, such as managing a group of children, or a skill they couldn’t learn in  school – it will improve their self-confidence, allow them to do things on their own without their parents’ help and make them feel freer and more independent, and make new friends.

Volunteering in a charity can lead to their insight into the world of work. It will give them a first-hand understanding of the challenges and constraints they will face when looking for careers, and the opportunity to interact with other people. They will form their own opinion by experiencing things first hand.

Look for free activities

During summer, many local libraries, swimming pools or leisure centres offer free or very affordable activities for teenagers.

Again, the point here is not to keep your teenager busy all day, but to avoid prolonging their “down time” indefinitely, by favouring activities outside home.

Take an art course

Many towns in the UK have summer art classes for kids, with themes such as photography, theatre, digital painting, etc. Contact your local town hall for more information.

If your child is very keen on digital image creation or drawing why not purchase our best selling badge making kit and let your child loose with creativity – designing their very own badges, keyrings, medals and more!

Doing fun things with friends

For a teenager, holidays are not just days off to do what they want. They should be about spending quality time with their friends.

So while you are working, if they are old enough to go out without an adult during the day, you draw up a programme for the week together to get them out of their daily routine: swimming, cinema, shopping with friends, a trip to McDonald’s, etc.

In return, in order to benefit from this, he or she will have to tidy his or her room / read a book every day / help with household chores… It’s up to you to establish what kind of participation you want him or her to have in the life of the house and at school. A good deal for everyone!

Camping in the garden

Teenagers love the idea of wild camping in the garden!

All they need is a tent, small foam mattresses, sleeping bags and, of course, friends and that’s it! In the evening, with an adult, they can even make barbecued marshmallows… And during the day, it’s guaranteed fun!

Looking after children

When children are on holiday, parents may find themselves without day care. If your teenager has a sense of responsibility and enjoys contact with children, he or she could advertise as a babysitter. All he or she has to do is put an ad in local shops near schools or activate your network!

An activity to gain self-confidence: theatre

When you bring your child to a local theatre, you are giving them the opportunity to take on a role in front of others. It can be so helpful for children to become comfortable talking and acting in front of others.

There are theatre schools and improvisation courses for teenagers, with groups according to age, which allow older children to discover the world of theatre through a well-adapted  method, working on oral expression, body language, concentration and memorisation.

Summer 2023 – Earning while creating

Looking to ease your child into financial independence and learning the value of self-made money?

Here at ebadges you can join a whole host of creative personnel who took the dive to use their creative spark to create wonderful designs. Think you could make it to our Facebook page with cool new designs? Why not give it a go and kickstart a side hustle that your child can include in their CV.