School breaks like summer, winter and spring break provide a welcome respite from the classroom routine. But keeping hyperactive or high energy kids entertained and engaged during time off can be challenging for parents. This article provides fun activity ideas to burn off excess energy and keep busy bodies occupied when school is out.
Get Active Outdoors
Taking advantage of good weather and heading outside is a great way to let high energy kids run wild. Outdoor activities and sports that allow kids to release pent-up energy include:
- Going to the park. Parks with playgrounds, open spaces, and trails give kids room to run, climb, and ride bikes. Pack a picnic or frisbees and balls to extend park time.
- Playing in the backyard. Set up lawn games like croquet, cornhole, water balloon fights, or relay races.
- Going for a hike. Find kid-friendly nature trails to explore and expend energy walking together.
- Swimming. Kids can swim laps or just play and splash around in backyard or community pools.
- Playing sports. Enroll your child in a sport like soccer, basketball, tennis, lacrosse, or gymnastics camp for regular athletic activity.
Indoor Play Spaces
For days with bad weather, indoor playgrounds and activity centers provide active play areas where kids can jump, climb, and burn energy.
- Indoor playgrounds. Soft play facilities offer padded structures, slides, and tunnels within a contained play area for kids to enjoy active free play.
- Inflatable parks. Indoor playgrounds like this Rapid City amusement park feature massive inflatable structures like obstacle courses, bouncy houses, and slides.
- Indoor trampoline parks. Kids can safely jump, flip and bounce on trampoline courts with special landing pits.
- Open gym times. Many gymnastics gyms, dance studios, and martial arts schools offer open gym hours for kids to freely enjoy their equipment and space.
- Indoor rock climbing. Kids scale walls and develop body awareness on climbing courses.
- Indoor skate parks. Kids can bring their own skateboard, scooter or inline skates to ride on ramps and rails.
Get Creative
Art, performance and hands-on building activities can provide engaging, screen-free entertainment for restless kids while fostering creativity.
- Arts and crafts. Let kids create through painting, drawing, sculpting with clay, sewing, woodworking, or scrapbooking.
- Cooking/baking. Kids can help prepare homemade meals and goodies while learning kitchen skills.
- DIY projects. Brainstorm fun crafts or building projects like making jewelry, tie-dying shirts, woodworking, learning magic tricks, or building model cars.
- Put on a show. Have kids write a play or variety show and perform for family.
- Make music. Encourage kids to start a band, compose songs, or learn a new instrument.
Screen-Free Fun
Limit screen time during school breaks and instead enjoy interactive games, reading, and old-fashioned fun as a family:
- Board/card games. Entertain kids and build family bonding with rounds of classic games like Monopoly, Apples to Apples, charades, or Jenga.
- Scavenger hunts. Have kids create a checklist for indoor or outdoor scavenger hunts to search for items or accomplish tasks.
- Reading. Let kids pick new favorite book series to get lost in or read aloud together as a family.
- Puzzles and building toys. Occupy hands and minds while developing spatial skills.
- Listen to music/sing karaoke. Let kids pick the playlist for dance parties or family karaoke nights.
Keeping high energy kids happily engaged when school is out just takes some creativity and advanced planning. Try out an assortment of active adventures, artsy undertakings, and good old-fashioned family fun to fill their time off with enrichment and energy release.