Our children went back to school recently after the summer holidays, which has given us much-needed space to replenish our mental databanks of ‘what can we do with the kids today?’ activity ideas.

Coming up with new, fun things to do can prove a struggle for even the most imaginative parent over a six-week holiday, but those good ideas come in handy all year round. And *whispers* you don’t always have to come up with them yourself.

Tiny Adventures is an iPhone app that snuck onto Apple’s App Store this weekend, armed with the slogan “It only takes a minute to make a memory”.

(Factual note: it takes the same amount of time for a five year-old to make an enormous room-filling mess, according to our memories…)

Promising “quick, simple, low-cost ideas for your family to have fun together”, the app prompts you to tell it how long you have available – a minute, five minutes, quarter of an hour or an hour – before suggesting some possible activities.

“Play Copycat or the Love Game, make some Bubble Magic, find Cloudy Creatures - and lots more,” as the App Store listing puts it. Note the “low-cost” in the app description: the ideas here won’t be a strain on your wallet.

The app comes from New Zealand-based parenting organisation Strategies with Kids - Information for Parents (SKIP for short) and fellow Kiwis the All Right? campaign from Canterbury. Its suggestions are just as applicable for parents around the world, though.

We can imagine some people being a bit sniffy about TinyAdventures: the ‘parents shouldn’t need an app to tell them to spend time with their kids’ brigade. But we’re glad this sort of thing exists: not every parent can magic up activity ideas at a moment’s notice, and sometimes what you find may spark other, original ideas when the app isn’t to hand.

And in any case, it should help you have some good fun with your children. Tiny Adventures is a free download for iPhone from Apple’s App Store.