Activities for teens during summer holidays

Suggestions for you and your teen for summer 2025

Quick summary

1️⃣ Summer is a great time to bond with your teen through outdoor adventures, creative projects, and cultural experiences

2️⃣ If they need solo activities, suggest volunteering, learning a new skill, or exploring educational apps for a productive break

3️⃣ The key is balance – giving them fun, screen-free options while allowing downtime to recharge over the holidays

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Summer holidays are a prime time for parents to bond with their teens, or for parents to find things for their teens to do nearby which will keep them engaged and productive – this can be especially helpful for working parents.

So here are some suggestions for parents of teens looking to make the most out of the summer of 2025.

Let’s start with things to do with teenagers in summer holidays 

Get outdoors

Explore the countryside or local beauty spots by doing a family hike, enjoy a camping trip, visit a city farm nearby, pop to the local park for a picnic or spend a day by the sea if you have a beach near you.

There’s lots of evidence  now suggesting that a greater connection to nature can reduce a person’s levels of stress and anxiety, so this can be a great wellness exercise too.

Get creative

Join a pottery workshop to try your hand at crafting your own ceramics, enrol in a family painting class (you could paint landscapes or even each other!), or go on a photography tour around your local area.

Stay active

Take a bike ride together along scenic trails, try paddle boarding or kayaking at a nearby lake or cancel, or even try something new like a trampoline park or rock climbing.

According to the NHS, teens need around 60 minutes of moderate or vigorous exercise each day – when they’re not at school, it can be much harder to motivate them to do this so finding something fun you can try together may help.

For more tips on helping your teen stay active, explore how to get your teen into exercise.

Explore culture

Visit local museums or historic sites, attend cultural events in your community, for example food festivals or community events, or you could pop out to a market and see what’s on offer there.

Here are some activities for teens when you’re doing other things

Help out

Volunteer at a local charity shop, take part in a beach clean-up initiative, or volunteer at a community garden, helping to plant and maintain green spaces. 

In luna’s anonymous Q&A feature, we actually hear from a lot of teens who would love to make some more friends – taking part in an activity can be a great way to do this rather than only meeting new friends online.

For additional strategies to support their social life, here are 8 ways to help your teen make friends.

Learn something new

There’s so much choice here – and a lot of this might depend on what your local area offers, but they could take a cooking class, enroll in a coding workshop to develop their programming skills, or join a filmmaking course. There are also often flyers up in local libraries and community spots offering classes which you could recommend to them.

Tech time

It’s not always ideal, but let’s be honest during the summer holidays there will be some time where your teen will be on their phone rather than trying to take part in activities.

Although social media or games might take up a portion of their screen time, they might also want to  try some more productive, educational apps that genuinely make them feel better. There’s plenty that could help them learn a new skill, like illustration or a new language.

Hope this has helped you – for ideas that extend into the cooler months, check out autumn activities to try with your teen.