What things do you do with your 3-4 year old which are cheap or free?

[BertieBotts]

DS is 3.9 and I feel like I don't do enough with him and let him sit in front of the TV too much while I do nothing on the computer. However, I know he is easier to manage, happier and generally a nicer child when I make the effort to spend more time with him, I just get stuck in a rut and find it hard!

We're rather short on money at the moment because all tax credits etc are going through on a new claim so anything which requires money, even a bus ticket, is out although could probably afford to do maybe one or two things a week if they were cheap enough.

Currently these are the things I do with him:
Feed the ducks/go for a walk along the canal
Go to the park (although I find this boring and he mainly goes off and plays while I take a book or my camera)
Meet up with friends, at their houses or at a park or the local community centre
Go swimming (haven't in a while, though would like to do this more)
Draw pictures/colour in
Help him with a game on the playstation
Cook together
Hang the washing up
General house cleaning e.g. windows or wiping down sides, cleaning bathroom sink or bath (with mild cleaners!) wiping grubby marks off doors etc, tidying up, running around on a challenge looking for plates/cups/rubbish
Dries up for me when I wash up
Build train track/marble run/happyland town (I don't mind building this but the actual playing part I find mind numbing)
Some simple board games like picture dominoes, guess who (again I find this hard/boring - and I wish I didn't)
Play shops/restaurants (occasionally)
Put on some music and dance (if I can catch him in the right mood) or he makes up songs with his toy keyboard and I video him as he likes to watch the videos back.
We always read stories at bedtime and talk about our day.

On his own he will play with his trains, do colouring, do jigsaws, jump/climb all over the sofa being spiderman, go on his bike in the (tiny) yard, play complicated but deathly boring (to me) games with various plastic animals/cars etc which all seem to revolve around killing or chasing each other, and begs me to join in with this. But mostly watches TV or plays games on the playstation or my phone, which I know is really bad.

Any fresh ideas which don't involve spending money?

Activities at local children's centre or library? Puddle jumping? Write/ draw postcard for grandma then go and post? Mine is just three so a bit younger. Tough with boys when the weather is this bad..

Visit local pet shop or garden store and check out animals/fish etc.

Sat morning Cinema, £1 a ticket.
Visit farm
Go to the viewing platform at Airport (DH does this, I won't go unless I'm flying somewhere sunny)

We had a picnic on the floor this weekend and had a dance to the radio.

Garden Centre with pet section keeps my DD entertained for ages. Pets at Home is another good distraction. Local farm. Country walk in wellies with prizes/games for the first person to spot a.... (cow, sheep, blackbird etc)

Preschool treasure hunt - Get a piece of paper and colour some large patches of different colours with crayon. You get to sit in the park/garden he has to go and find something of each colour and bring it to show you (best not in someone's garden where they will mind him picking flowers).

Picnic meals out somewhere

Trip to supermarket where you tell them something on the list and they have to find it and put it in the trolley (my DD's favourite activity at the moment)

At the library for everytime you visit you get a stamp in a book and a certificate after so many stamps

Arts and crafts, make rockets etc with egg boxes, bottles, bottle tops, yoghurt pots, great fun.
Walk round the block and count cats
Walk in the woods and collect things/pick wild flowers

Home made playdough or magic sand (baby oil and flour) cooked cold spaghetti
Dyed with food colouring makes fab tactile play as does cornflour and water. Bubbles. Watering cans/ cups/ buckets outside. Add icebergs from the freezer. Minibeasts. Gardening.

Check out what's on at your local library. Lots of them do story or song times, and they're all free. Mine has also started doing these 'story sack' things, where you get to borrow a big bag full of toys and games relating to a particular book, so you can act it out or whatever - they're great fun. We've also got a little museum of town life - most towns have one - which is mostly a bit dull, but does have a few things for kids to look at/do, and it's free entry because noone would go there otherwise.

Do you have binoculars? DS and I did an hour-long birdwatch the other day, as part of an RSPB thing (just looking out of the bedroom window, though you could do it in the park instead, and noting down all the birds you see). I thought he'd be bored after ten minutes, but he keeps asking when we can do it again . Another place I sometimes find useful for DS (not quite so much nowadays) is the local church - there's something about an empty church that's somehow fascinating, even for small children. I allow him to scamper about a bit (as long as there's noone in there), and he gets interested looking at the windows and the statues.

If it's a hot day (ever again!!!), a bucket of water outside is fun, however small your yard - give him a paintbrush and he can 'paint' everything in sight. Re chores, it sounds like you already make him useful round the house - good!- but how about food shopping? I found two things that turned food shopping from a pain to a joy - treating it as an end in itself, not something to be rushed through, and giving DS a list (first just pictures, then words as he started to read) of things to find himself. Now it provides free entertainment for two whole mornings a week (free in the sense that you'd be spending the money anyway).

We do a lot of craft activities. Rather than just drawing randomly. We make all our cards with handprints etc.
Draw around them and get them to cut/colour themself in.
Get a tesco direct/argos catalogue and let them cut things out and glue.
Get a packet of paper faces from a craft shop and googly eyes, make each of their friends and talk about what makes each one different.
Colour bath water/glitter and do some interesting water play.
Make your own playdough, or even better saltdough decorations (think i have some on my profile).

Oh and my dd's best one. Buy one if those cake mix sets for about two quid. Far easier for a littlie as most is just add water or milk.my dd loves making lurid 'barbie cakes' and i dont get wound up over a mix compared to weighing out ingrediants.

We make clothes our of tin foil, cling film, black bags etc and do a fashion show.

1 idea off the top of my head as a shameless marking place to read the whole thread tomorrow

DD and I made a castle last week using a shoebox and some kitchen roll tubes. Brilliant fun.

Can you afford the CBeebies magazine? It keeps my DD entertained for ages with activities, and you have to do it with them if they can't read so it makes you interact.

Grow things in pots - herbs and flowers. Seeds are cheap. Cress grows very fast.

Geocaching. Gives walks a whole new purpose.

To liven up drawing/colouring, my 4yo ds loves cutting things out (old magazines, promo brochures from supermarkets, old birthday cards) and sticking the bits on to paper. Play hide-and-seek (inside our out)

One of the sponsored discussions asks exactly this and there are some great ideas.

If you can bear the noise, a home made concert using saucepans, colander, wooden spoons, is brilliant. You both sing along eg the wheels on that *ING vehicle or the one about the senile farmer and bang the instruments. A rolled up newspaper is a fine trumpet, a comb with greaseproof paper over it makes a funny tickling noise.

If you want to assuage your conscience about the tv, get a few dvds of fairy tales and also French dvds. He won't notice they are in French, or rather he will just accept it and you will have a Ds who accepts people speak a variety of languages and not have hang ups about it. English and US cartoons dubbed into French and German are somehow hilarious.

Oh yes, boxes. Get as big a one as you can. Cut holes in it. Play with him in, on, round it. Soon he will do so himself. I saw a huge fridge box being the best toy at a children's centre. It was a tower, a rocket, a story telling place, a power rangers home, a zoo and stable.

And don't feel.guilty. I too was ad bored as hell in exactly the same way.

My boy is 3.6

He mainly likes to fight/bicker with his sister
Dressing up, including hair and nail varnish!
Park - muddy puddles and looking for beasties , his favourites are LOOK MUMMY WOODLICES!!!!
Sticking - a load of scraps of paper and crafty shite from The Works and a small dish of PVA glue
He likes to help me with baking I hate it when he helps and licking the spoon/mixer thing
He really really likes to go out for a walk with a carrier bag so he can pick up all the litter
Dancing, he likes it when I put CDs on and he has a good boogie round the living room
Playing with the (dry) dog food, tipping it into the dog's water bowl to make soup
Drawing on the walls not popular with me

Actually, he used to watch rather a lot of telly but since we got our 2nd dog we just don't have time, pick up from preschool and school at 3, come home and walk dog, in the park where the woodlice are, make tea, have bath, fight for an hour with DD then stories and bed.

Occasionally I walk the dog while they are out then we do thrilling things after school instead. Like today we went to the bank and then Sainsburys

Yes, what IS it about woodlice? It's as if they were specifically designed by nature to entrance small children.

Museums. If you live in / near a decent sized city they will have all manner of things on for kids pretty much every weekend and are still free. Go while it lasts.

Large pet stores to look at the pets.

Somewhere on the bus/train just in itself.

We go looking for the neighbours' cats when all else fails. Not in their houses or anything, but in the street. We know the names of three of them so we hunt them down like dogs. Surprisingly effective at stopping tantrums (DS is only two) and a good excuse to get some air.

My DD is 4.5 and we do:

Activities in the local children's centre (she does a messy play session which is cooking/gardening etc and she also does a dance class once a week

Visit the local library every 10 days or so to choose new books

Visit our local garden centre to look tab the fish and they have just opened a mini soft play there too

Take her to the park and have a picnic if the weather is nice

She loves the cbeebies magazines and they keep her happy for ages

Volunteer and our local youth club that her older brother goes to and it means if I stay then she can too and join in the activities

Make crafty things (she has to make a crafty thing each week for nursery show and tell ie last week was an Olympic torch and this week was a flag).

Have a picnic inside for lunch if the weather is bad.

Take her out on her scooter.

Forgot to say DD also loves the pet shop as others have mentioned, although last time we went she shouted very loudly that there was a dead fish in the tank and wanted to know if it would go to Heaven!!

We once spent days making a whole village with cardboard boxes - all the colouring, glittering, gluing and stuff took forever, then endless possibilities with railway stations, rivers, dinosaur forests , roads etc etc to navigate with toy trains, cars and so forth.

Hours and hours of entertainment.

For about a pound's worth of felt tip and glitter.