The kids are bored already. They say the pool is too crowded and the park is too hot -- or too juvenile and you don't want them hanging out at the mall yet.
You need a diversion. Within an easy drive of the Greater Toronto Area are fantastic museums, big game, old-time travel and spectacular scenery that can be enjoyed in time to be back home by bedtime.
Only 10 months old, the Waterloo Regional Children's Museum has four storeys of activities for busy bodies from six months to 12 or 13.
"All the exhibits are hands-on," says Michele Baumgarten, the museum's director of marketing. "We encourage them to manipulate things."
From bubble tubes and soft mats for six-month-olds to a two-storey high screen with lights for shadow playing or the Grand River Play and hydraulic swamp water area, there's something for everyone.
If your small fry are into small things, try Cullen Gardens and Miniature Village, near Whitby, where you can stroll down Main Street and Cottage Country, all at a tiny, detailed 1:12 scale. Many of the buildings at Miniature Village are models of actual historical homes in Ontario, and are handcrafted by the park's staff.
But if you had something bigger in mind, how about elephants, rhinos and other big game at African Lion Safari? At the Cambridge- based park, you can see lions, tigers, zebras and more than 100 other species from your car or the park's air-conditioned bus.
The park, which is committed to conservation and helping endangered species, has just finished a $3-million expansion to celebrate its 35th anniversary. Visitors can now visit the Asian elephants along a walking trail or climb towering aviaries to bring some of the park's many birds in for a closer view.
Rather like the experiences of another continent, the Simcoe Steam Train creates the atmosphere of another century. Located outside Newmarket, the one-hour trip from Tottenham to Beeton is part of an old railway track that used to connect Hamilton with Barrie. The historic train and narrated tour will delight fans of model trains and Thomas the Tank Engine.
If your children prefer more action, the Richmond Hill Wave Pool has an indoor beach complete with 1.2-metre waves and a 48-metre twisting water slide. The family can enjoy hours of water play in the pool bodysurfing on the waves, splashing in the shallow end or relaxing in the large swirlpool, complete with jets and sprinklers.
For the really adventurous, how about walking across Ontario's longest suspension bridge, miles of hiking trails and a labyrinth of caves and caverns? The Scenic Caves Nature Adventure in the Town of the Blue Mountains, two hours from Toronto, is must-see for spelunkers, thrill seekers and hikers alike. There is also a new three-hour eco-adventure program up in the trees. And if it's been raining for days in the Muskokas, an easy day trip north brings you to Sudbury's Science North and Dynamic Earth. The northern science centre offers an up-close encounter with porcupines and flying squirrels, a chance to build a robot or walk through hundreds of tropical butterflies. The new 4-D movie of a bush plane has your chair tilting and tipping as you fly over the wilderness of Northern Ontario, feeling the wind and the spray of the adventure.
A 10-minute drive brings you to the big nickel and Dynamic Earth, a 40-year-old nickel mine with exhibits on the history of mining. "You go down in a shaft," says Lorraine Wilkinson, marketing specialist at Science North. "It's a glass elevator and you're seeing films and images being shown on the shaft. You spend 45 minutes underground and you get to see the history of mining."