Summer holiday frugal fun!

[Whatthefunk]

This morning, Ds12and I, took the dog to a nearby lake. There wasn't another soul to be seen. We took off our shoes and shorts, and paddled, up to our thighs. Bliss. 2 hours of fun, splashing about with our crazy Jack Russell. And it didn't cost a penny With a 12 year old, these trips are rare. What are go to frugal funtimes?

Den building

*your

Love den building! We live near a forest, so lots of fun to be had

A film afternoon, perfect when it's either much too hot (like today) or raining. Can make popcorn or pizza or something first to eat while watching.

Making pizzas/cakes/burgers etc is also frugal and can be eaten outdoors.

Toddler DD was occupied for 2.5 hours this morning with the garden hose, an apple and next door's cat.

Hahahahahaha! Poor cat!

Tomorrow, I have 4 kids. Dan tdm DVD, in the morning. Pancakes for lunch. Ice cream in the forest, then finish at the park 😀Earning my wine, this week

Paddling pools - municipal or back garden

Pond dipping and identifying what you have found

Cooking

Not necessarily in this heat (I can’t do anything when it’s so hot!) but in general I have cheapish plans and plans with things I have already bought cheaply/on sale a while ago so they will be free when we do them.

I have some magic sand and a couple of little trays for dds to play with, paddling pool, duvet day, i bought a couple of cheap den building sets from thenworks last year so they can make a den in the garden, I’ve got bird seed to go and feed the ducks, there’s a small splash park type thing we can go to that’s free, walk round the lake, trip to the garden centres (there’s one near us with gorgeous show gardens you can run around in) we have passes to a local attraction and a few parks we can go to.

Sounds lovely!

Cheap/free things are my favourite kind of things!

We do:

Beach / woods / park days - take a picnic
Have friends over - lego, football, xbox
Crafts/baking - my mum's great at this!
Trips to library & museums (free)
Theme park - have a season ticket

We do a mixture of the above through the holidays with the odd cinema, lazer tag, waterpark thrown in.

These all sound great! Don't mind splashing out, on the odd treat, when the rest of the time we are having frugal fun

I was born in 1963 so as I was growing up there no daytime TV, neither parent drove and we didn't "do" much stuff during the holidays (apart from actually going on holiday), we entertained ourselves. Including:

1. Setting up show jumping course in the garden (using chairs and broomsticks etc). One would be the horse for the first go and then swap over. We would be timed by a long-suffering mother or much older sibling.

1. Sharing a pair of roller skates. I mean sharing. One each and scooting round town on one skate each.

1. Playing in the derelict building across the road even though we were all forbidden to do near it. Half the town's kids must have been in there.! It was BRILLIANT!

1. Took ourselves off to the swings. Possibly under supervision of older siblings, otherwise we just escaped.

1. Catching newts in the stream. Doing that squat-sitting thing that only young children can do. Unsupervised obviously.

I'd like to think a 21st century child might enjoy some of those

Popped into see friend earlier and she had frozen little sweets and little toys inside massive ice cubes. Kids were banging away at ice with toy tools. They were occupied for ages, brilliant fun.

Having a driveway sale of old toys and books etc after a good clearout!

Days out planned around activities funded by Tesco points or similar

Washing cars

Giving them a prit stick, some sellotape and the contents of the recyling box...

StCharlotte we used to do the show jumping in the garden too! I had completely forgotten until I read your post. Thanks for the lovely reminder.

Lots of museums and galleries are free and many have activities on during the holidays.

Swimming at the local leisure centre. Wave machine and slides so I can pretend I’m at centre parcs.

The local art gallery usually has free crafts on during the school holidays plus there’s a playground outside and a lovely cafe inside so we easily spend 2+ hours there every school holiday.

Museums, local castles, the beach, park, crafts, film days, baking.

That is exactly what I wanted to do with my kids at the weekend, but the weather is to be terrible here, also need to travel miles to get somewhere where no one else will be.

One of my favourite things to do with ds in this heat is to make a bingo card and take it to the freezer aisles of any local supermarket.

Tesco is our nearest.

First one to find the remotest items such as frozen mash or diced chorizo wins an ice lolly.

He always wins and I take ages but it’s so hot and Tesco is so cool.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Try this Bucket & Spade list of 30 things to do at the beach from the RNLI:

rnli.org/news-and-media/2019/july/15/how-many-activities-can-you-cross-off-the-rnlis-bucket-and-spade-list

Better link here!!!!

rnli.org/pages/the-bucket-and-spade-list?utm_source=pressrelease&utm_medium=vanity&utm_campaign=bucketandspadelist_2019

Loving freezer bingo at the supermarket!!

We recently bought a garden sofa thing that came in 3 huge boxes. My dc had hours of fun over the course of that week building dens, houses, caves, shops etc etc. They climbed inside and trapped each other. They pretended to post each other. They rolled each other over in them. Now they're in bits all over the garden and they've got to go and pick them up and put them in the recycling bin!