Your cheapest activities to do with kids (suggestions for any age kids welcome)

[carefullycourageous]

Hi, I was hoping to get some suggestions of new activities that I could do that do not cost much.

I will add one for starters - making an Easter egg-shaped pinata.

Uses: 1 x balloon, old newspaper, any coloured paper for the top layer, glue made from flour and water, bit of string to hang up.

This one is good for the holidays as it fills up quite a lot of time over a couple of days if you let it dry between layers.

Painting in the garden with water. Really simple but my kids love it! A bowl of water and some paintbrushes and the paint the patio and the fence for ages!

Starting a "band" at home and recording a concert. Pots, pans, wooden spoons, etc. My almost 6yo and a friend did this only yesterday and this has been a staple activity since dc was 2!

Collect leaves/twigs/etc from outside to make a seasonal picture with - great for older toddlers

"Washing up" give kids a bowl full of bubbly water and let them wash up - great young toddler activity

Check out five minute mum, loads of great activities for kids using normal household items

My DS (7) and I go for days out walking - we print off directions of routes along public footpaths from the internet which he loves to follow, step by step. He loves to follow the waymarkers, looking out for the next one on the route. We walked 7 miles one afternoon, through fields and woods, stopping along the way to see tadpoles, collect sticks, count bees, asking questions on our surroundings.

He even asked me one afternoon how much the walks cost - as if we were out at a theme park. It's a great way of getting fresh air, exercise and learning about wildlife and our surroundings.

Cooking meals: not special baking but peeling potatoes, chopping veg , making pasta sauce, sandwiches etc. Ttakes some time, teaches a useful skill, adds nothing to the budget.

Outdoor/camp style cooking: if you have outdoor space for a barbecue or a little fire pit. Sausages on sticks, s'mores, camp pizza (stuffed wraps in foil), baked bananas, broomstick bread: you can add in campfire songs if you aren't easily embarrassed.

Collecting and displaying: be it stones or shells or anything interesting they find, displaying it in a box or frame means you can enjoy it for longer, and the organisation and resorting can go on for ages!

Laundry: I remember teaching my DC to make socks into a ball, or to leave the ends hanging loose, or to pull them out so they are paired flat, then they get to choose how they want their socks from then on and go it themselves (works from about 5 when they are dexterous enough)

Teach them to skip ( about y2 onwards)

@CloseEncountersOfTheTurdKind

Painting in the garden with water. Really simple but my kids love it! A bowl of water and some paintbrushes and the paint the patio and the fence for ages!

This is what I was going to say. It can keep my 2 year old entertained for hours!

with my 2 year old:
Digging in the garden.
Extra long bath time, bonus points when I let him splash everywhere
playing cleaning.

Thank you everyone!

I missed my chance to paint with water, why did I not think of that???

I think I might try some outdoor cooking this holiday

Scavenger hunt. List of items they have to collect
Or if you go for a walk, questions like what colour door is at number 16.
Other ways to make walks interesting are to count the number of dogs you see, play eye spy, play the alphabet game ( topics such as girls names or animals then find one for each letter of the alphabet)
Put on music and dance
Get them to make up a show to perform for visitors
Get a roll of old wallpaper, trace around them and then they can paint themselves
One summer I bought a different type of cheese each time I went shopping so they could try them
MasterChef mystery box ingredients - see what they think they can make
Teach them how to make real hot chocolate
Find some podcasts aimed at kids
What’s the time Mr Wolf
Play hot and cold - blindfold one, give them a wooden spoon and they have to try and find a saucepan in the floor. Call out hot, warm, freezing etc

Scavenger hunts are very good, I also did some trails/hunts during teh pandemic where we went into two teams and had to find all the items on a joint list, kept regrouping to confer. But it could have been competitive too. You can do scavenger hunts with photos if you don't want to have to collect items.

going for a bike ride
going to the library
going on an Easter egg hunt (if your town has organised one in one of the big parks, ours is £1 entry)
going for a bus or train ride to a different playground (depending on DCs ages/how much your local buses are/if you have a season ticket etc.)

@carefullycourageous

Thank you everyone!

I missed my chance to paint with water, why did I not think of that???

I think I might try some outdoor cooking this holiday

veganonboard.com/campfire-bread-on-a-stick-recipe/

Brilliant ideas so far. I'd also add for Art and Crafts with an Easter theme, egg decorating - hard boiled eggs and paint or use felt tip pens to design your Easter egg. A fun Science educational game in the garden or a field is float and sink - large bowl of water and trying to guess whether household items will float or sink. Or you could make a "volcanic eruption" with some bicarb and vinegar and a spot of food colouring - always a wow moment!

Buy a basic pizza base (or make dough if you like) and let your little one add a little extra tomato puree/ grated cheese and any toppings they like.

The side plate size basic margarita I buy from the fridge at tesco is 50p and my little one adds a teaspoon more puree and a tiny bit more cheese (just for the fun of it) while I have some chopped ham or whatever just to give him more sprinkling. He sings "pizza, pizza party" while he works. Costs 50p each plus pennies if you use a little of what you already have on the top for a fun lunch. As it's only refridgerated it cooks in no time at all.

Bike ride/scooter ride to a park and then shop where you know you can get an affordable multipack of ice creams (used to be £1 for a 4 pack of fake cornetto but maybe this has gone up?) or chocolate. Take your own drinks or even picnic.

Cinema night (at home) with sweets or snacks from supermarket. You might have films on a streaming service or ask friends if they have any good films you can borrow. Some films/tv series on catch up tv apps.

Bake something and watch Bake off show or Junior Bake Off on catch up. You could even video snippits "what are you making today..."

Later in the year when they open if any of your local parks have splash pads they are good fun for younger kids.

Feeding the ducks at a local park.

Having their own garden (part of a border) plant with easy to grow things like Cottage Garden seed mix, sunflowers poppies, garden mint in an old bucket, beetroot, radishes etc.

Helping with cooking…
make the mint sauce to go with roast lamb
Grate cheese
Grate carrots or courgette for soup or to microwave with a knob of butter for a quick vegetable
Peel & chop hard boiled eggs for salads or sandwiches
Shell peas.

Ask relatives to club together to buy family memberships as gifts.
Go to a different park, it doesn’t have to be good at all. My daughter’s favourite park is a really crap one which we hardly go to.
Picnics, if the weather is bad have an indoor picnic
Use up all the arts and craft stuff you have hanging around
Stay up late for film night as a rare treat, even better if they can’t tell the time

Agree film night with some homemade popcorn is an excellent cheap way to kill a couple of hours - and a rest for me!

We planted some wildflower seeds today, the seed was only £1 from the pound shop, got a big box that will last a few years.

I have trained my DC to love a good charity shop rummage. We bought a 500pc jigsaw yesterday, it's been keeping us busy ever since. £2 well spent.

Once we've finished it we will re-donate it.

Definitely plant up some lettuce and spinach seeds, so easy to grow and you will end up saving money on shopping.

Make a play/musical or film with them. You can spin this out over weeks as you can make costumes (improvised from scarves/Big old shirts/whatever), choose music, make a set, learn lines, then act it out and film it.

Follow a yoga podcast or do exercises with Joe wickes. Go cycling if they have a bike.

Art and salt dough pottery. Flour is still cheap for now. Art galleries are often free. As are museums and libraries.

Photography, go out and take as many photos of flowers as you can find. Or as many blue things/yellow things etc.

Get an old sturdy box (lidl and morrisons are good for free boxes) and make it into a dolls house with them. Or a car, tractor, zoo, farm etc.

Lovely thread.

We dye uncooked pasta and rice with food colouring + hand gel / vinegar to make the colour hold, then use it for sensory play in big trays with scoops and ladles etc.

Home made play dough with a couple of drops of lavender oil added.

Cloud sand is another - flour + baby oil + food colour, it holds its shape when you squash it but then crumbles again, like sand.

We sometimes get massive cardboard boxes from the communal recycling point and draw on buttons, dialled etc to make cars.

Get a big roll of white paper.
One day draw a race track in it and play with cars, another day draw a jungle and play with animals on it etc etc

My kids also loved washing their garden toys with a bucket of water, sponge and some washing up liquid. Saved me a job too 😂

All the old lockdown favourites like scavenger hunts, painting rocks, drawing on the windows, going for a scooter ride around the block etc are making a come back this year.

Also I bought some wooden eggs to do "egg hunts" in the garden all year round - they love them.

Making pizzas from scratch.

Geocaching was also cheap and fun (do people still do this?) There used to be an app which told you where to find them in your local area.

ooh thought of I've, decorating the path/garden/outside brickwork with chalks. Kept then going for hours.

Also, if you're in it for the longer haul making a Herman friendship cake can be quite fun. Plus any kind of tents indoors, lost DS when he was 3 and he'd taken himself off to his wigwam for a massive sleep.

I bought a magic bag from Morrisons in too good to go last night so getting kids to plan how to use the contents is quite fun (unless it's 10 bags of iceberg lettuce again).

Kids also lost days to making slime if that's still a thing?

Photography, go out and take as many photos of flowers as you can find. Or as many blue things/yellow things etc. This is a good one for older kids too, you can try to photograph different shapes or interesting bits of architecture, or as many animals as possible, or do an A-Z challenge in a new town where you try to spot an object starting with each letter.

Thanks for all the lovely ideas on this thread, it reminds me that there is so much fun to be had when you slow down a bit and spend less.