Ideas for Cheap Ways to Entertain Kids During the Holidays

Thanksgiving and Christmas will be here soon and that means no school for the kids. With the economy the way it is now, we can all use cheap ways to entertain our kids. Here are several ideas for cheap ways to entertain your kids during the holidays whether it is nice outside or if the weather is rainy and everyone is stuck indoors.

Pin The Raindrop On The Clouds

Draw a life size picture of a Dark Cloud and hang on a wall. Make a big raindrop out of construction paper to pin on to the cloud. Use a piece of tacky stuff to pin the raindrop on.

Musical Chairs

Arrange 5 child size plastic chairs in a circle. Each guest stands in a circle around the chairs and start a music cd playing and stop it all of a sudden. The kids grab an empty seat & the ones that are left standing are out of the game. Remove one chair and start the cd playing again. Continue stopping cd, restarting and removing chairs until one chair remains. The child that is sitting in the last chair that remains wins the prize, which can be a huge, stuffed teddy bear.

Create You Own Cupcake

Bake the cupcakes according to directions and then fill bowls with different colors of icing. Fill small plastic bowls with m&m's, gummy worms, sprinkles, candy corn, licorice strings and set all of this on the table. Let each child ice their own cupcakes & decorate them as they wish. See which child can be the most creative.

How Many Words?

Write down one long word and see how many other words kids can come up with. The one with the most words wins.

Wall of Art

Place a large piece of cardboard on to one wall. Next, hang an old worn out bed sheet on top of the cardboard. Give your kids a box of Crayola washable makers and a box of Crayola washable paints and paintbrushes. They will have lots of fun for hours creating their masterpieces of art.

Bowling

Buy a small plastic ball to use for the bowling ball, and use empty 16-ounce water bottles or soda bottles for the bowling pins.

Bottle cap Shuffleboard - Create a triangle on the end of the kitchen table out of masking or painter's tape, and create 3 sections: the tip of the triangle is worth 30 points, the center is worth 20 points, and the larger base of the triangle is worth 10 points. On the other end of the kitchen table, place a piece of tape to create the push-off line. Use bottle caps (4 per player, and mark with stickers or paint to determine who the caps belong to) and push them so they slide from the push-off line toward the triangle. Players can push another player's cap off the triangle (or even off the table!) and the winner is the person who reaches 200 points first.

Classic card games - card games like "Go Fish", "Crazy 8's", "Old Maid", and "Slap Jack" which we played as kids can be taught to our kids.

Photographic memory -Find a picture from a magazine or use one of your own photos and then show everyone the photo and let them study every detail of the photo for 20 seconds and then take the photo and have everyone write down as much as they can remember about the photo. Person with the longest list wins.

Toothpick Houses-Glue toothpicks together and build houses, forts, grocery stores and more. After the glue dries on each house, fort, ect, then you can use Crayola paints to finish them with.

Walk on stilts - Take two empty coffee containers and turn them upside down and then make a hole right in the center using an ice pick. (Parents will need to help do this!) Thread a piece of rope into the hole and tie a knot inside the can. Make the rope long enough so that when the child stands on the can he can still have enough rope to hold on to.

Bubbles - Put two drops of dish detergent in the center of a plate and add a few drops of water. Give the kids a straw, and let them blow bubbles on the plate. Add some food coloring to the water. You may want to give your child traditional bubbles and a bubble wand and let him or her blow bubbles in the bathtub. This is only recommended for children that can actually drink from a straw and knows not to drink any of the bubble solution.

Make a Fort Hang some blankets or sheets on the back of chairs or lay over the kitchen table or a card table. They can have snowball fights by using Styrofoam balls, which can be found at Wal-Mart, or they can use newspapers and crumple them into a ball. Kids will have hours of fun using their creativity on what to play inside of their forts

Card Tower - Get out a deck or cards to use them to build a tower. You can build your tower on a coffee table and or the floor. Lean one card against another, creating a triangle. Create a second triangle a couple inches to the left or right of your first one, and connect the two with a card laying flat over top. See who can create the tallest tower.

Hunt the Pennies - Clear a room of anything that could cause harm to a kid. Blindfold children and give hand them a sandwich bag. Scatter a bunch of pennies around the floor and find as many pennies as they can in one minute. The person who gathers the most pennies wins.

Rubber ball race - You need an empty toilet paper tube for each child and a small bouncing ball for each. Create a finish line by placing a piece of masking tape on side of a room. Line the kids up on the other side and let them drop the rubber ball through the tube launcher and see which ball wins.Matchbox Car Races- Open up a cardboard box and lay it down flat on the floor. Create a raceway using Crayola Markers. Make a Pit stop area using a small cardboard box and cut out a door on one side. The kids can use their Barbie dolls, army dolls and stuffed animals to use as the audience.

Penny Toss - Use a permanent marker to write some numbers on the inside of empty plastic margarine lids. Fill up a cake pan with water and then place the plastic lids on top of the water with the numbers facing up. Give each child a few pennies and let them toss pennies in and try to hit the targets for points. Add up points to see who wins.

Popsicle Miniature Golf- Use Popsicle sticks for the golf clubs and gumballs for the golf balls. Lay a cardboard box on its side and cut out a few holes in different spots that are big enough for the gumballs to drop down into. Set up obstacles on the golf course by using building blocks, empty toilet paper tubes and small votive candles. Next, take the Popsicle stick, and glue on a piece of craft foam to the end to make the head of the golf club. See who can get their gumballs into the holes the quickest.

Race of The Pillowcases -Find all of your pillowcases that you do not use much and then have each child place both legs down inside of a pillowcase and hang on to the top. Create a starting point and finish line by using a piece of rope. Whoever hops over the finish line first is the winner!

How Many Things Can You Find - Gather some books, magazines and newspapers. Kids can go on an adventure, finding the different things in each magazine: things that belong in a bathroom or kitchen, places to visit, things that have four legs, etc.

Make A Tornado In A Bottle - In a plastic soda bottle, fill it three quarters of the way full with water and add a couple drops of food coloring. Place the twist cap back on to the top of the water bottle to secure a watertight seal. Hold the bottle and swirl the water in a circular motion, and set it on the table to see the tornado inside.

Picnic In The Yard

Pack a picnic basket and head out to the backyard and enjoy a day filled day. Put a tent up and make S'mores and roast weiners using a small BBQ grill.