To find it expensive keeping preschoolers fed & entertained?

I genuinely didn’t find this phase expensive. Agreed with all the pp about cheap or free activities. How much screen time do they have? The more they have, the less they can concentrate — that was the case for mine at least.

Mine are older teenagers now, so it's been a while! But, I do clearly remember those long days of needing to fill time.
Soft play was a waste of money for mine - they just didn't seem to enjoy it, and spent the time whinging to go home 🙄.

From memory, the free/cheap stuff that seemed to be a hit with mine..

"Washing up" - a basin of warm soapy water, and a selection of plastic cups, plates etc. Give them a sponge and a teatowel.

A tip I got from MN about 15 years ago was to let them 'paint' the garden fence. Get a paintbrush, and a tin of water, and let them get busy. A wooden fence will "change colour" when it's wet.

About once a week, we used to go on a bus run. The local bus would stop by us at around 10.30am. We'd pack our lunch and drinks, get on the bus and just ask the driver for a round robin ticket (I think it was £3). We'd tour around the local villages, looking out the window spotting things. The bus would drop us back home about 1pm, just in time for nap time/quiet time.

Possibly the best money I ever spent was £50 annual pass to a local garden centre, and we renewed this for a few years because we got such good value from it.
Aside from being a garden centre, it had a dinosaur display, a little museum of space travel. There was a miniature train to ride on, a small soft play area, a swing park, and a cafe. Everything included in the price (except the cafe obviously).
I know it's quite a bit of outlay, but we went at least a couple of times a week. The DCs would wake up in the morning and immediately ask if they could go and see the dinosaurs - the stegosaurus had a button to press which made its head turn and make a roaring sound. They never seemed to tire of this!

I'll think of some more.
It's a really hard stage, Op, I remember it well.

Cheap as chips compared to teenagers and young adults! I miss the days where jumping in a puddle was hilarious and a bowl of strawberries was culinary perfection. Even an expensive day out was much cheaper because you generally only pay when they're 3/4 and even after that it's child prices. They were happy with a picnic or to share a main or a couple of sides if we bought food.

Now they want theme parks, season tickets for football, or to 'borrow' £500 for a ticket home from Thailand. They eat three courses including steak when we eat out, drink elaborate coffees or cocktails in the case of the older two.

The only thing I did to ‘entertain’ my children was to keep the tv on all day and let them have free play of all the dressing up, role play, garden, art stuff etc. We did go swimming and had an occasional trip to the library. I hated parks and forced activities so we didn’t do that very often. They learned to entertain themselves and to this day reminisce about their ‘idyllic’ childhood.

It is tricky but mine often prefers the easy things to big set pieces.
Baking.
Trips to the park - particularly if there is a bandstand to run around.
Library - ours has craft sessions after school.
Museums.
Trips on public transport.
Watching trains at the train station.
Spending pocket money at the charity shop - our nearest has good books for 50p.
Trips to the supermarket and helping to carry the basket or push the trolley.
Pond dipping for bugs and fish.
Running. Outside. Anywhere.
Church play groups.
Also I have seen a few toddler groups that only charge a nominal fee for people on benefits or universal credit.
Trip to your local city farm if you have one nearby.
Playing with a football.
Croissant in a local cafe.

I appreciate you may not live near parks and forests so do more in your own home.

Learn to entertain them yourself. Doesn’t matter how old they are, they can help bake cakes. Mixing sugar and butter, sieving in flour, cracking eggs and mixing, then get them to help with the cleaning up.

They can also help with housework, dusting and hoovering. They will have fun and learn for life.

Do more craft activities, paint, make clay models, paper crafts.

Older mums will tell you, we didn’t have all these places to entertain our children when they were little.

One of our free activities is visiting Pets at Home. Just go and look at the animals. Go and look at all the interesting things they put in fish tanks, look at the live bugs for reptiles. We quite often pop into charity shops too just for a mooch. Kids play with the toys for a bit, sometimes buy a 50p toy or book and then enjoy it at home. I also sometimes make a picture shopping list for them when I go to Tesco now.

We also have a farm nearby and walk to look at the animals. And we're fortunate to still have decent access to Children's Centre sessions. They're free and they have specific ones for preschoolers rather than toddlers.

Yes soft play and activities can rack up. Just choose not to go. Park, playgrounds, libraries are free.

But YABVU for complaining about having to feed your child.

Feeding pre school kids isn't inherently expensive? They have like, 1 slice of bread for a sandwich, maybe a slice of ham inside..., a piece of fruit, 1" of cucumber, a slice of cheese and a small bit if yoghurt for lunches? That's hardly going to break the bank??

What are you giving them that's so expensive?

Look for season tickets for somewhere... childrens museum, farm park, national trust, zoo etc. Big initial outlay, but works out cheaper over the year.

My DD is 4...and is easily entertained for free. She's happy in a puddle!

Her free things to do
Walking - round lake/ponds, through woods, across fields
Paddling in rivers
Jumping and playing in puddles
Going to literally any playground
Exploring the woods - making dens, climbing trees, looking for fairy houses.
Library
Nosing around toy shops (to put things in her wish list)
Watching trains go by
Picking daisies and dandelions
Looking for insects in hedges
Blackberry picking
Watching animals in fields

Friends of mine have made an thing with their kids of having one 'activity' per day - might be something tiny like making healthy banana pancakes for lunch or a cheap activity pack from Lidl like 'necklace threading/play dough/sand that you can get in the sale. I would agree with the park but I know what you mean - we find a trip to the library only takes half an hour and is over so fast!

I keep meaning to buy a 'shopping trip' type game and using that to help my child do a largish shop using flashcards and encouraging them to find items - some supermarkets do toddler Trolleys which mine loves!

Library, park, church playgroups, play dates or just stay home. Believe it or not, kids didn't used to go out to organised activities every day, maybe one paid activity a week like baby swimming that was it, we started ballet at 4, also violin lessons but not prior.

Yes you need to feed children but that's the cheap bit

Mine went to paid activities about twice a week. We would do a few outings to places like the supermarket or park. We tended to only go out once a day and not every day. If you need to go out twice a day I can see it adds up!

Are you in England? At 3 and a half your child can have the 15 hours of nursery.

I think probably depends on where you live and how big your circle of friends are. Around us there was a different church hall type group each day that could walk to. You met nice people and kids would play together whilst you chat. On sunny days meet friends at park, on wet days rotate around houses..