Life of Dahlia

Entertaining your children can be hard and often quite expensive, even more so when everything keeps getting more expensive. This isn’t usually a topic or demographic that I share content for, but I know it can be stressful sometimes to keep kids entertained. I’ve had this post and the included activity book sitting around for a while, and I never got around to sharing it. But if I can do something to ease the stress of a parent or guardian who are trying to find an inexpensive way to entertain their children, I am happy to help.

In this post, I’m going to share some ideas on affordable ways to keep your kids entertained. I’ve also included a free downloadable activity book I have put together, which you can print out for your kids if you want to. It includes some puzzle activities, a colouring page, some fun nature play activities, and more.

Affordable Ways To Entertain Your Children

📚 Check out your local Library or Community Center 📚

Quite often, local libraries and community centres will offer free or low-cost activities, especially during the school holiday periods, so be sure to check out what your local library or community centre has to offer. You may need to book in quickly because they may only have limited places, but they are sure to have some fun activities for your kids to join in on.

📖 Read a Book Together 📖

Reading with or to your kids is essential for their development, but it can also be fun and exciting to read a story with your child. If you are not a strong reader (reading allowed), then you could take your kids to the local library for a reading hour or borrow an audiobook through your library’s digital app and read along with a book you already own.

🧩 Free Puzzle Generators 🧩

The internet is a great place to find puzzle generators; many of them are free and have premade puzzles, but also offer the ability to create your own. A quick Google search should bring up quite a few websites that provide free puzzle generators. Some offer word searches, crosswords, Sudoku, mazes, and many more.

🖼️ Use Canva to create free stickers and colouring pages 🖼️

Canva is a great tool that many people use to create documents, social media content, and more. It has a lot to offer even in its free version. It could be a great way to create free sticker sheets for your kids or some free colouring pages.

I would only recommend using this service for personal use only; don’t sell the things you have put together, because it likely goes against their terms of service.

🥣 Create your own Play Dough using ingredients from your pantry 🥣

While Play-Doh isn’t too expensive, you may prefer to make some homemade Play Dough using ingredients that you most likely already have in your pantry. You can even use natural herbs and spices to colour your Play Dough instead of food colouring if you want to go all natural.

The recipe is usually pretty easy to find. Check out Pinterest or Google; there are a lot of blogs out there sharing homemade playdough recipes.

🧁 Have a Baking Day 🧁

Baking with your kids can be a fun experience, and you may already have most of the ingredients in your cupboard. So maybe try making some cookies, cupcakes, or even some homemade pizza, which the kids could help decorate, and you get to eat your creations once they are cooked.

🎲 Have a Board Game or Puzzle night 🎲

Board Games and Puzzles can be fun to play or do as a family, so maybe schedule a game night. If you don’t have any, check out local department stores for sales, Second hand stores or your local library.

🍿 Have a Movie Afternoon or night 🍿

Taking the whole family to the movies can be quite expensive, so maybe opt for a movie day or night. There are always new movies coming out on streaming services, and renting movies is a lot easier now through digital platforms. If you don’t have good internet service, try finding a DVD to watch. You can even borrow them for free from your local library or buy them cheaply from second-hand stores. Though they may not be the latest blockbuster, you might find something fun to watch together as a family.

⛺ Camp out in your lounge room or backyard ⛺

A camp-out can be fun, and you don’t even need to leave the house, so try a camp-out in the lounge room or backyard. You might want to combine it with a movie or games night to make it an extra fun activity.

📋 Create a Scavenger Hunt 📋

Creating a Scavenger hunt can be fun and entertaining, There are a few websites that can help you create one, so if you want to make one quick and not use Canva for example to make one you can try somewhere like Quickhunts.com which allows a lot of customization, including the theme of your hunt, the location in which you will go on your scavenger hunt, what type of you want (like taking photos, spot or collect items, collecting tokens, etc. You also get a cool image you can print out once you add the items you want to look for.

(I have also included a nature-inspired scavenger hunt in my activity booklet, if you want to use that for one.)

🚶 Go for a Walk 🚶

Go for a walk, it could be to the local park, playground or a nature reserve. Maybe you could combine it with a scavenger hunt to make it a bit more entertaining for the kids.

🌿Go to a local park 🌿

This one is similar to my go-for-a-walk suggestion, but if you want to get out of the house but don’t want to spend lots of money, going to the local park or playground can be a great option. It gets everyone out of the house, and the kids can burn off their energy by running around and playing on the playground.

You could even organise a play date with one of their school friends or take a picnic with you.

🎨 Do some craft activities 🎨

Even if you don’t have an abundance of craft supplies at home, you can still have a craft afternoon; you can use old egg cartons or paper roll holders to create something. Another option could be gathering items while out on a walk and trying some fun nature craft activities, like leaf and flower printing.

There are many ways to experiment here. For example, you could use a leaf as a sort of stamp by adding paint and then laying it down on a piece of paper, which will leave the leaf’s impression on the paper. Another alternative is reverse printing by placing the leaf down on the paper and painting around it. It will then leave a blank space where the leaf was, and it looks quite cool in the end.

Other nature craft activities could include rock painting, flower pressing, leaf and flower impressions in clay, or perhaps making decorations from pinecones, or crowns with sticks and leaves. There is so much potential for fun crafts here, so let your imagination run wild.

If you want more ideas, a quick Pinterest search should give you many ideas on what you can do.

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📺 Check out a Preview of the Activity Booklet here 📺

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Download The Kids Activity Booklet

I’ve created this printable activity booklet to give you and your kids some fun activities to do during the holidays.

This is free for you to download and print out, I’ve included usage rules and credits on the last page of the booklet, but basically, I give you permission to print this out for personal use only. But please do not redistribute or resell this activity book in its digital or physical form. You can find all the rules on the last page of the booklet.

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I hope you found some helpful ideas in this post. If you have some more ideas you would like to share or enjoy using the free activity booklet, then leave a comment letting me know.

Until next time, I hope you all have an awesome day.

Erin.

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Disclaimer – This post is not sponsored and doesn’t contain any affiliate links; any links included are for reference only in case you are interested in checking out a mentioned link or purchasing a reviewed product. Check out my full Disclaimers here, including AI use on my blog.

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