No spend day weekend ideas for family: please share!

**melina123** · 01-04-2009, 09:44 AM

Hello,

I'm working on making vacation days and weekend days no spend days in our home. So far so good. We have 2 kids (1 and 6 years old). Generally we plan two outings a day. A walk in the morning and park in the afternoon...library.....things like that. One outing is pre-nap time for the baby and the other is after nap time. It seems to make the day run smoothly. We bake cookies and eat in.

What are some other no spend days ideas for weekends? Please share!

Melina

**cheles2kids** · 01-04-2009, 11:07 AM

You could check with your local library, if you live in a city that has a good library system. They usually have special things planned during the year for the younger kiddos, and almost all larger library branches have a "story hour" each week. (oops, just noticed you mentioned your library already)

Also check with your local parks & recreation department, they usually have a website with free classes, or "field trips" that are paid for by the city and are usually free for families as well.

Picnics on the weekend are great.
Also if you have enough yard space, "camping" out in the yard is a fun activity for the kids, but then you would need to put out the initial expense of the tent and things.

If you have a nice park close by, and an area designated, you could load up the kids' bikes and let them ride bikes for a few hours at your local park.

Also alot of times, if you are in a city with any museums, they sometimes will offer free hours to go by without having to pay admission, or they have a "kids day" where they offer admission at a greatly reduced price.

I know when my kids were that age, they just loved being outside, regardless of where we went.
I could take them to the park with a ball and they would play for hours.

You could also research online and find some crafty ideas to do with them at home with things you already have around the house?
Most kids around the 6 yr. old range love doing any kind of craft.

**Mavourneen** · 01-04-2009, 11:13 AM

When my son was young, I was always on the lookout for those free Mommy and Me coupons where you could take one class for free. Music, dancing, etc for kids.

In the DC area, there are also several children's theaters that put on productions where at least one weekend matinee is free, or the adult is $1 and kids were free - those are a lot of fun for all.

Pick up a local parenting magazine ( the kind they distribute free at the grocery store, etc ) and see if there is an email distribution list for your area that will alert you to things in your area. we have several of those types of groups here in Washington DC.

Have fun!

**homesteadmamma** · 01-04-2009, 11:16 AM

Our weekends were like that too. We often went on a picnic or we would go to the parks in the towns near us. We often just went on a hike, they loved that. When it rained, we'd do puzzles or read. During the long winter months, we taught them how to play cards. Weekends were some of the best times we had, because dh was gone most weeks.

**frugalbabe** · 01-04-2009, 12:35 PM

Do you have a university near you? We do and it has a planetarium that every once in a while will have a free/extremely cheap matinee show...not sure if the 1 year old would like it but the 6 yo would probably love something like that! We also have an indoor gym run by our parks and rec district that is just a huge room full of mats and that sort of thing with a very minimal charge for winter afternoons...hmmmm I'll try and think of more.

**itsahumanzoo** · 01-04-2009, 12:56 PM

If you go to the website for chuck-e-cheese, you can download calendars for your child. Things like potty training, bed time, cleaning up toys, etc. It's for a two week period, and when the child fills it up you can take it in and get 20 free tokens. That's plenty of tokens for my DS to play for a while, and we don't have to spend anything. We just eat before we go so no one's hungry.

**Minner77** · 01-04-2009, 02:30 PM

Get your local Community Events/Community Education newsletter, put out by either the city or the county. It often has tons of free events; I live in a fairly small town and we have such things as a free swimming/movie afternoon/evening.

I just googled "free kids' activities" and "free things to do with kids" and a ton of pages came up -- some online activities, but also a bunch of printable coloring pages, jigsaw puzzles, holiday themed activities, and so forth. I googled "free things to do in (my town)" and was surprised there were even hits for that.... I'd completely forgotten, for one thing, that there is a *huge*, free, park full of storybook characters and other special attractions for younger children (my youngest is 14...).

Other than that, I was going to suggest what the others have: picnics, hiking, playdates, cooking, going to the airport to watch airplanes (or maybe somewhere to watch trains), the library, finding free days at museums, planetareums, checking local colleges for their free events, high school sporting events, or high school plays. And how about volunteering? Maybe your kids are too young, but they could go with you to visit a senior center, perhaps.

**Royal** · 01-04-2009, 02:44 PM

My 2 boys (6 & 4) love going to the woods here in our neighbourhood. They always have one tree that they climb.
They also love to do crafts. I'm talking about painting, colouring or even playing with play-doh.
I have also made treasure hunts (indoors) for them. I made a treasure map and put the amonuts of steps that they had to take. Then they would have to count to 10 backwards while sitting on the chair in our office. They would then have to go to our room and do a sommersault(my english isn't too good anymore, but I hope you know what I mean). At the end of the treasure map I had an old shoe box with a big X on it and inside it I had all different kind of treats. A candy, and a new colouring book that I had in my gift drawer.
I have to say they LOVED it. And I had one of those""I know I'm a great mom" moment.

**elphie** · 01-04-2009, 03:12 PM

We like to go to state parks and hike- even on warmer winter days (anything above 40 is bearable for us). We usually take a picnic lunch although we have been known to eat it in the car when it gets too cold. We are always on the look out on our states tourism website for free activities nearby. When we stay home we bake, play board games, look at photo albums, play ball in the yard, etc.

I tell my kids that there's no such thing as bored... only lack of imagination.

**MamaTreadler** · 01-04-2009, 03:26 PM

My kids are older, so our activities and what we can do will be a bit different from yours. Having an official "movie night" is always poplular around here. I'll generally announce it the day before or the morning of so they can look forward to it. They both get to pick a dvd to watch, I pop lots of popcorn and we all pile up in the evening and watch the movies.

They like games like Life and monopoly too. Having things around that they like to do help too. My son is really into Legos, so he has lots of them and can spend hours building intricate things. My daughter likes to read, so she's usually got her nose in a book or listening to music. Sometimes I will get one of those big 1000 piece puzzles and it will stay out on a table in the living room. Everyone likes to stop and take a few minutes here or there and work on it. It's very relaxing to do that actually.

We're homebodies, so we don't do too much out of the house unless it's an absolutely beautiful day that just won't be ignored. But that is still several months away.

**MisaLady** · 01-04-2009, 04:24 PM

The Simple Dollar has a blog post that lists 100 things to do during a spend free weekend. Within that post, Trent has linked to a few other posts that he has some spend-free ideas as well. This has been an invaluable resource to me.

**Buc-O-Mama** · 01-04-2009, 06:59 PM

Check your Michaels, Home Depot, Lowe's, etc. for their free craft/activity days. We took our kids (now teens) to quite a few Home Depot activites, they ended up with a free little orange apron with pins to correspond to their projects they had made.

You could also check out the churches in your area, if you are so inclined, there seems to be something fun for kids going on a lot around here.

A trip to a pet store is fun, to really explore new critters and it could be really educational if you discuss habitats, diet, etc.

Check out pickyourown.org, and go learn a little about farming and pick some fresh produce while you are at it.

**momof2joys** · 01-05-2009, 12:55 AM

Thank you to everyone, I have found some really great ideas for a question I was looking for an answer to. I have 3 kids (ages 1,3, and11), so finding something that works for them all is a challenge, but you have given me many ideas!!!

Thanks again!!

**LastDragonfly** · 01-05-2009, 01:40 AM

Sometimes we go to the zoo and feed the ducks our stale bread. Sometimes our zoo has a no admission weekend.

**elphie** · 01-05-2009, 12:44 PM

another fun activity I got from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year in Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver- they have a weekly make your own pizza night where they make the dough together and then everyone makes their own personal pizza with the toppings of their choice. They usually enjoy it watching a movie or tv.