With summer coming up, the sun coming out and the kids home all day, we've put together a few things to keep them busy all summer long, no matter their age!
Top three things to do with your young ones:
Youth Circus Experience Days
Turn your youngsters into performing monkeys at these circus skills workshops teaching everything from juggling and diabolo to tightwire walking and trapeze. Book in advance.
Saturday June 27 2015 - Saturday July 18 2015
National Centre for Circus Arts,
Old Street
http://www.nationalcircus.org.uk/experience-circus/experience-days/youth-experience-days
Horrible goodies at Hoxton Street Monster Supplies
Take your darling little one’s mind off picking and eating bogies by taking him or her along to this wonderfully fun emporium – a place that would happily sit on Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley. Rows of edible treats from ‘Bah! Humbugs’ to ‘Cubed Earwax’ sound way more disgusting than they taste.
159 Hoxton Street
http://www.monstersupplies.org/
Let a mad scientist make you an ice cream
Next time the kids beg for a 99 Flake cone, wow them with a trip to the fabulously fun Chin Chin Labs in Camden Market. Flavours vary weekly and might include ingredients to suit adult tastes but there are also sweet treats for all. The ice cream is frozen in front of you in a cloud of liquid nitrogen-generated steam, and pimp your tub with a veritable chemistry set of sprinkles and sauces – you too can be a molecular gastronomist.
49-50 Camden Lock Place,
London,
NW1 8AF, UK
Top three activities for kids of all ages:
Festival of love
The Southbank Centre's having quite the love-in this summer with the return of their Festival of Love – two months' worth of installations, activities, pop-ups and performances that celebrate humankind's most overwhelming emotion.
The installations and a range of exhibitions will be revealed on the opening weekend, during which many family-friendly free events are also scheduled. Some weekends will explore specific themes;Urban Weekend (Aug 8-9), and Big Wedding Weekend (29-10), and scheduled events like the famous Appearing Rooms(Jeppe Hein's interactive fountain; walls of water rise and fall randomly to create a series of constantly changing 'rooms'), free singing and dancing performances and workshops by Love Larks (August 15) and free artist-led craft workshops, poetry and dance every Friday in the Royal Festival Hall (11am-4pm). An urban beach has been built beside the river for anybody inspired to build a sandcastle.
Until Monday August 31 2015
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Rd
http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/love
Notting Hill Carnival
Since Notting Hill Carnival debuted in 1964, the event has grown, attracting ever more revellers with its spectacle of floats featuring calypso, mas and pan bands as well as a series of sound systems for alfresco dancing. You can be sure of dense crowds and a vibrant celebration of music, movement and masquerade together with Caribbean food stalls serving up jerk chicken and fried plantain. The more family-friendly Sunday is the best day to take children to the Carnival, with the main parade on Monday normally winding a path from Great Western Road, along Chepstow Road and Westbourne Grove to Ladbroke Grove.
Notting Hill,
Westbourne Park
http://www.thenottinghillcarnival.com/
Ride London
A weekend-long feast of cycling sport and leisure that sees an eight mile loop of roads around central London closed to regular traffic so that bike-enthusiasts can get a clear run at it. The Prudential RideLondon FreeCycle takes place on August 1 and enables cyclists of all ages and abilities to take a safe spin around town. Later the same day there will be a Grand Prix event around St James’s Park with races for young Olympic hopefuls and professional female cyclists. The world's top 150 male cyclists will also be having a go in the Prudential RideLondon-SurreyClassic, so you can cheer them on too.
Saturday August 1 2015 - Sunday August 2 2015
http://www.prudentialridelondon.co.uk
Top three places to take your teenagers:
Trampoline Mania
Oxygen, a new 27,000 square foot ‘trampoline park’ opening in west London, is a room of wall-to-wall trampolines.Other than randomly bouncing about the place (or ‘freejumping’ as they call it) there’ll also be fitness classes, dodgeball games and even some professional tuition if you want to perfect your somersaults. And it doesn’t just cater for an entire generation of emotionally regressive twenty-somethings desperate to relive their childhoods – there are plenty of events for teenagers too. If you’d rather munch than jump, Oxygen are promising homemade pizza, quality coffee and wi-fi in their viewing gallery.
Opens on Monday July 20
Kendal Avenue,
West Acton
Bunker 51
This industrial-looking underground bunker in Greenwich is the atmospheric setting for a game of laser tag or paintball. Your mission is to save the world from impending nuclear disaster, which you do by getting kitted out in protective equipment and being armed with either an infra-red laser gun or a (gentle) paintball gun.
3 Herringham Rd
London
SE7 8NJ
Wireless
For the second year running, Finsbury Park plays host to an eyepopping line-up of hip hop, R&B and dance music royalty. Drake’s the big Friday headliner, while EDM dons Avicii and Guetta take on Saturday and Sunday nights respectively. That’s not to mention young stars from both sides of the Atlantic such as August Alsina and George The Poet, plus hip hop veterans Grandmaster Flash and Arrested Development, and R&B queen Mary J Blige.
Friday July 3 2015 - Sunday July 5 2015
Seven Sisters Rd
London £62.50-£69.50
http://www.wirelessfestival.co.uk
Our top three summer must see plays:
1.Bend it like Beckham
2.Stomp
3.Seven brides for seven brothers (16 July 2015 - 29 August 2015 Open Air Theatre)
Must watch movies this summer:
1.Inside out
2.Mission Impossible: 5
3.Amy
4.Fan
5.Bajrangi Bhaijaan
6.Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Seven albums to watch out for this summer:
1.Of Monsters and Men- Beneath the Skin
2.Adam Lambert- The Original High
3.Owl City- Mobile Orchestra
4.Grace Potter- Midnight
5.New Politics- Vikings
6.Rudimental- We the Generation
7.Disclosure- Caracal
Top six YA novels to read this summer:
The Art of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson
Finding Audrey by Sophie Kinsella
Tales from Modern India: An anthology by the students of Delhi University by Jyoti Singh
'Never Always Sometimes' by Adi Alsaid
Two States: The Story of My Marriage by Chetan Bhagat
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
One cool trick to survive the summer:
Why drink regular water when you can drink healthy home made tastier version? All you have to do is the following:
Take a cupcake tray (muffin pan) and fill the holes with water
Slice a lemon and place a slice in each hole
Put in the freezer until it becomes ice
Add to water
You could also do this with oranges; maybe even throw in some mint or sliced strawberries!
If this isn't enough, go on our website to see thirteen DIY projects your youngsters can do at home!
