HE with no budget (: Am I stressing unnecessarily or should I just give up on HE?

[Livingbytheriver]

Hello?please help?.has anyone successfully HE'd with no budget?

DP was unemployed for a while last year and financial recovery is incredibly slow, at the moment there is literally no spare money for anything (yesterday's cuts have made me panic more!) Activities have come up but we have had to miss out because even though they are cheap I have been totally skint. It all feels a bit rubbish ATM.

DD (3) is very sociable, we live on a school run route and she has asked to 'join in' so she has joined nursery to see how it goes and give me a bit of breathing space.

If anyone has any helpful advice that would be wonderful...

Sorry...there was only meant to be x1 '?' in my first line!

there's loads you can do without £££

quite a few of the HEers I know are totally into the freecycle, freconomy lifestyle

If she's enjoying nursery, then leave her in it. Maybe you could do some work from home in that time to make some pennies for fun activities?

Thank you ommmward...yes I have been thinking that I could perhaps leave her in until 5 and do a few bits.

We seem to be able to find recourses fairly well, we get bits for birthdays etc it the social things clubs/classes that need £££'s that worry me more.

It's more fun with a bit of cash, but quite doable without. My husband was unemployed for most of last year and we had to drop some activities, but I found nearly as many new ones which were free to families on benefits.

Not all kids enjoy group activities. My older daughter loves them! On the assumption that yours will too...

Doing masses of networking will turn up some free and nearly-free activities. You might want to start joining some local email lists now so that by the time your little one is ready for these things, you'll be in the loop. Other local home educators may have useful information which they'll be delighted to share, so pump them for it shamelessly! Start making notes of things that might be useful in years to come: I use the Files and Links sections of my local home ed Yahoo group for this, so I am sharing info with other people and storing it for my own future use.

For example, here are some of the activities which my 11 year old can do for 50p or less per session:
chess
choir
swimming
hockey
science lectures
park play
local history tours
voluntary work at youth club
Woodcraft Folk
museum workshops
open days
theatre performances
sailing taster sessions
church nativity plays (some churches are so short of children that they're glad to have non-members in to swell the numbers)

If you have any contact with local organisations which do interesting stuff, ask them about educational outreach. There's a local sound and film production college which has said they'd be glad to have us in for a day. Pizza shops often do free "school" tours - I must get round to booking one.

Just plug away and keep your ear to the ground!

I don't know where you live, but it's definitely worth checking your local council's websites for 'Family/Children's Activities', which are almost always free. One of my daughters did a six-week pottery class with me which cost nothing, paid for by the council.

There are almost always story-telling sessions at local libraries, '1 o'clock clubs' (basically play-groups, based in halls/parks, etc). As your child is only 3, she's in a very good age-bracket in terms of government-funded provisions for 'Early Learning' ...

Thank you...lots of ideas, the pottery sounds fab CS. I think plugging away saracan is probably what I need to keep doing (I can be a bit impatient I think), the 50p or less list is good and long! The church nativity idea is something we could do fairly soon...I've joined some groups on yahoo so I'll check out their links (tbh I haven't really looked much at them before).