Most of these are cheap/no cost ways to have fun:
- We go hiking at a new park each time. We find some really interesting parks too. We have learned there are over 50 parks in our area.
- We go fishing at some of these parks. We make sure there is a playset nearby so our son, age 8, if he gets bored with fishing he can play on the swings.
- My son and I go metal detecting. We have found all kinds of bottle caps and old stuff. Nothing valuable. When I give him the MD I make sure to "seed" the area with a few coins so he can find them. He gets to keep anything he finds.
- We go geocaching. I bought a GPS and using coordinates I find on the internet, we go treasure hunting. When you find the cache you can trade small toys in it and write down in their log that you were there. My son loves it!
- When at parks we try to find frogs, pollywogs (if in season) or turtles or other wildlife. Or I identify the flowers we find there.
- One park has a randomly spurting fountain that the kids can run in.
- My son likes to help with planting flowers or clearing weeds. That's very handy! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" /> We also water the lawn together.
- We have hermit crabs. Sometimes we make cage decorations for them. Like we made a sign out of popsicle sticks that says "Beach -->".
- We have made soap in the past.
- We have made chocolate candy, cupcakes, or snacks for cubscouts.
- We have made gel candles. Kids get to pick out molds, colors, and smells for the candles. We made some candles with blue dye, and put sand in the bottom along with shells, starfish and seahorses and plastic fish so it looked like the ocean.
- How can you organize your kids' drawers? We make boxes. How many things can you make boxes out of? Square boxes...round boxes...other boxes. We make boxes out of empty cartons, plastic or cardboard tubes, or cut them out of flat cardboard and tape together. The kids decorate these with beads or seashells.
- Kids can also make a family tree. Show them who their great-grand parents are, when they were born, etc.
