Cheap summer fun
June 14, 2009 by Shannon
Summer is here. Which means popsicles, swimming, running through the sprinkler, and that all too familiar phrase to moms everywhere: “I’m bored!”
Thank goodness Kellan is a little too young to start using this one on me. But I can sure tell when he’s seen a little too much of the inside of our house. And quite honestly, there’s only so many trips you can make to the park or library before that gets a little stale and boring too. Here’s what I do when we need to get out and I don’t want to spend a lot of money to keep Kellan entertained.
- Go sightseeing at the pet store. This has become one of our favorite places to hang out, and Kellan loves to push around the mini shopping carts. There’s plenty to see — fish, turtles, lizards, birds, cats…sometimes we get lucky and a customer comes in to shop with a brand new puppy. There’s also a really nice employee who usually walks around with a bird on his shoulder, and he has let us hold the bird on more than one occasion. (Well, when I say we, I mean me. Just one squawk and Kellan takes two steps back and stares at it like it might eat him.) If pet store employees see you around all the time, they’re more likely to give your kid a hands-on visit with an animal, free of charge.
- Cruise around your local garden center. This is a great place to help teach toddlers about colors and textures, and even little babies can get a thrill over touching the leaves and blossoms. Kids from age two and up can pick out their own plants to take home and take care of. Kellan has a blast watering our flowers every morning, and although he often chooses to water the patio more than the plants, it’s a great way to involve him in a daily chore without worrying about the mess he could potentially create. It’s water. It will dry.
- Plan a mid-week picnic with daddy. Why save them for weekends only? I pack up a cooler with sandwiches, pasta salads and drinks. Then Kellan and I drag Michael away from his desk and to the park across the street from his office. It breaks up the monotony of his day and Kellan loves to spend a little extra time with his daddy. Plus, I know a picnic keeps Michael from dropping another $15 bucks on lunch. I’m sneaky like that.
- Head for the water. We’re lucky enough to live in a town where the river runs right through the heart of the city. Kellan loves throwing rocks in the water. It’s that simple.
- Go grocery shopping. Now there’s a trick to this. You can’t just go to any grocery store. You’ve got to hit one of those supercenters with a supervised play center. They’re not open all the time, and they usually only take kids who are two and up. But they can give you a couple of options: one, get your grocery shopping done in peace; two, give you time to wander aimlessly through the cosmetics, clothing or shoe department. (Note: this activity is likely to incur some expense. Just don’t tell your husband.)
So there it is. My go-to list of sanity-saving, cheap kid entertainment. Sometimes, a mommy’s gotta do what a mommy’s gotta do.
What do you do to entertain your kids on the cheap? Leave a reply and let me know!
Comments (12)
Rotate your toys!
My kids are older now, so it’s not an issue.
I’ll be putting a post up on this subject soon, so be watching for it.
Thanks for visiting me over at Inspired RM! Sandy
We do the pet store thing too! The kids love looking at the animals and the mini-carts are the best. We also love Target, especially when the weather is bad — a $2 smoothie for the kids to share, a Starbucks for me, and a leisurely stroll through the toy section. And sometimes, they get to pick something out of the $1 section up front. Easy way to kill some time for cheap, and the $1 toy keeps them entertained the rest of the afternoon.
We also do the pet store visits, mostly in the winter though. And I love grocery shopping with the boys. They put in whatever they want into the shopping cart, and I just take the stuff I don’t need out of the cart before we go pay! I just love evenings at the park with my kids, and lots of swimming!
Great ideas! We do the library’s kid section, sidewalk chalks or fingerpaints outside, and pretend “gardening” where I get actual stuff done and Nina plays with her toy garden tools. Of course, she gets actual stuff done too, if you count pulling all the blossoms off the flowers as actual stuff. Bike rides to a nearby park are also part of our free-time routine.
Loved this post and am enjoying your blog in general! We are all about entertaining young kids on a budget and two places we love to go that are free are the MK Nature Center to stroll nature in the city and the fountain at the Centre on the Grove to splash in the water. It’s a great place during the week for mom to get an iced coffee, the kids to cool off, and us all to chill. I might even be able to pop into Urban Outfitters afterwards if the kids are tired out enough!
“pet-shop” : this is a very good idea. Thank you. We do some cooking or bakery with the kids, some special cookies or chocolate things. We also go to the forest, where we can stay thousands of hours and every time we find out different and new things.
My son’s preschool takes fieldtrips using the city bus around the north end and downtown to either parks or to a coffee shop for hot cocoa in the winter. The destination is not nearly as exciting as the bus ride. Kids are free and I think adults are $1.
Love all these ideas! It’s clear that AnchorMommy readers are quite savvy when it comes to cheap kid entertainment! Keep the recommendations coming!
Great ideas! I think my new favorite one is going to the garden center to look at all the plants…does it matter if I don’t have kids? I’m just so thrilled to finally have a back yard!
We were all 2 years old once upon a time. Most of us, as the years have gone by, have forgotten the things we most liked to do when we were that age. That’s where a dad can help . . . by reminding you of one of your most favorite things to do when you were two!
Go to the public library! At the age of two you were an avid reader (does this surprise anyone?). You wanted 10, 15, 20 books at a time . . . as many as we were willing to carry home. You would read them all in a day and then wanted to go back for more. Eventually you had read every “early reader” book in the Boise library.
Sandy mentioned swapping toys– swap books too.
In retrospect we might have been a little out of control when we started a Golden Book pyramid scheme. . . but it worked. We sent out 2 books and got about 30 back!
Read on!!!
Dad
I love getting together with my mommy friends at a park or school playground. Kids get to play, we get to visit. If we go to a different park every week, the kids never get bored.
Pele loves the pet store, especially the fish. She got her first fishes last week, 4 feeder goldfish. She named all four of them Dorothy and 6 days later we’re down to a single Dorothy. I guess it was like a Highlander thing,………….. “there can be only one!”