STRUGGLING to make it through the last week of the summer holidays? These effective time-wasting activities should push you over the finish line:
Hide-and-hide
The classics never get old. Announce a game of hide-and-seek and remind your kids that the quieter they are and the longer they stay hidden, the more Haribo they’ll win. And then retreat under the stairs with your laptop for the length of three episodes of Ozark.
Simon Scares
When you need peace and quiet, fear is your best friend. Tell your kids that tigers, vampires or evil power rangers are about and prop them up at the window with loo-roll binoculars. You’ll be nice and wrinkly before you’re disturbed from your relaxing bath.
Eye pie
Put a massive banoffe pie on the kitchen table and walk away. The exhaustion of the initial scramble followed by the aftereffects of an unsupervised carb overload should have your children asleep on the kitchen floor in no time.
Boxing
Find an Amazon box big enough to uncomfortably hold a child, then challenge said child to spend 30 minutes in it. Provide a countdown while you scroll social media on your phone. if you have a box for each child it’s an endurance contest.
Movie night
Don’t just shove a film on. Make a big deal of it and get the kids drawing tickets, posters, signs for doors, commemorative programmes and fire safety notices to build it up into an event. Then stick them in front of Ice Age 3 again, it’s the best one.
Hopscotch
A foolproof fallback plan for you’ve really reached your wits’ end: play the kangaroo hop section of a Joe Wicks workout on loop for the kids while you neck Famous Grouse straight from the bottle.
