Cheap Summer Fun For Kids

Summer Break Activities That Children Have Always Loved

May 26, 2009 Jan Peterson

When the last school bell rings and summer vacation starts, children want to have fun. This year, return to those inexpensive summer activities kids have enjoyed forever!

Kids just want to have fun during the summer. But if money is tight, finding inexpensive things to keep them busy can become a real challenge for parents. A return to the simple fun that has kept kids happy during summer vacation for generations, just may be the answer. Here are three examples.

Kids Can Work Jigsaw Puzzles For Weeks During Summer Break

A popular summer activity for families in the "good old days" was working on 500 or 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles. Mom would set up the card table in the corner and dump out all those pieces and help her children get started. She would help them find the corners and straight edges and group some of the similarly colored pieces together. Then the kids would take over. It wasn’t frenzied or fast paced excitement, but rather a calm activity that required concentration, and helped develop several skills without anyone realizing it!

In her article on searchwarp.com, “Are Jig Saw Puzzles Educational?” Barbara White answers her own title question with a yes! She says, “Most notably developed in this learning process are the abilities to reason, deduce, analyze, sequence, and develop logical thought and problem solving skills. Physically, eye-hand coordination and spatial awareness are also required to complete a jigsaw puzzle”.

As children work on the puzzle during their summer vacation, they talk, laugh, and enjoy each other’s company without feeling any competitive angst. Hours fly by and every now and then Dad may even join in, and find that one puzzle piece everyone’s been looking for! This activity helps fill up the void during the summer months, because It can take days to complete a puzzle. And even though it feels good once it is finally finished, having relaxed summer fun with family that is the real success.

What is the cost of a jigsaw puzzle today? Walgreens has a five pack of 500 piece jigsaw puzzles for $5.99! This would be hours and hours of fun for less than the price of one movie ticket! And the best part is that your kids can put those same five puzzles together again next summer!

Get Kids Painting with Water Colors This Summer

Most adults can remember, as children, having that long metal or plastic paint box filled with twelve colors and a paintbrush. Water color painting has been a fun, low cost activity for kids forever.

Set up the activity at the kitchen counter or table. Provide lots of inexpensive paper, a set of kid’s boxed watercolor paints and a heavy bottomed cup filled with water. Then just stand back and let them become little artists! If the child hasn’t mastered creating a scene, they can paint a page from a coloring book or create a colorful masterpiece out of a white coffee filter. HowStuffWorks.com has a craft article by the editors of Publications International, entitled, “Water Color Paint Crafts” for more ideas.

The boxed water color paint sets can be purchased for $3.00 to $5.00. Office Max carries multi-purpose paper for around $4.50 a ream, and a fifty page package of manila drawing paper sells for around $3.50. What a bargain for something that will give a child hours of fun that could become a serious hobby in the future!

Crafting with Modelling Clay is Creative Summer Fun

Kids have never minded getting their hands icky to have fun. Modelling crazy objects formed from modeling clay is fun that sets a child’s inner sculptor free! Give them a rolling pin, cookie cutters, buttons, craft stamps and beads. The objects created can become gifts for grandparents (they like anything!), decorations for the next holiday tree, paperweights, flowers, buttons, etc.

Crayola has modeling clay that sells for approximately $2.50 a pound, but modelling clay can also be homemade from water, vegetable oil, flour and salt. Ideas are available online or in modelling clay craft books.

This summer, turn back the calendar and rediscover the things kids enjoyed in the “good old days”. The fun won't cost an arm and a leg, require electronics, or create competitive friction. There are lots of ideas that fall into that category that kids will still enjoy in the 21st Century.