Entertaining Kids on a Shoe String Budget

Children don't need to go to Walt Disney World or carnivals to have fun. And entertaining kids on a budget isn't hard. It only requires some creativity and free places to go.

Valentine's Day is just around the corner and so is St. Patrick's Day. Since kids love both days, it seems only natural to entertain with those days in mind. All kids love cupcakes and they love to decorate them even more so grab a cake mix, frosting and various candies. Encourage them to make special cupcakes for special people like mom, dad, grandparents, and best friends as well as for themselves.

Young children like to be a part of the adult world. Although as an adult your mail is filled with bills and junk, a child sees the mail as mysterious. So let your child send and receive mail. While there is pen pal associations that you could join, writing letters to grandma is more personal. They could tell her what is going on that day or what they want for their birthday. She could write them interesting stories of her childhood. The kids will be excited about getting the mail to see if there is anything in it for them.

Is there a park near you? Time for nature walks! Dare the kids to find and collect as many different types of leaves as they can. Then you can help them make a leaf scrapbook. It only takes some paper and colored pencils or crayons. All you have to do is show the kids how to put the leaf under a piece of paper and then use the edge of a colored pencil or crayon to make a rubbing. You can encourage the older kids to discover the name of the tree or plant that the leaves came from.

As you can see, it doesn't cost much to entertain kids. So go make the kids and your purse happy.