It Must Be Free!

I have lately been browsing through pins and blogs of cheap summer fun for school age children and have noticed something distressing.

No matter how cheap the activity is, when you are accumulating supplies for an entire summer worth of games it gets expensive. I have spent roughly $60 on 2-3 weeks’ worth of activities. They were all very reasonably priced at $2-$4 per child, but depending on how many children will be participating even that can be a lot.

So I am on the hunt for FREE, completely $0.00 games. We have had 2 successes so far.

1. Sponge toss- 

You will need:

- any kind of household sponges

-a bucket or dishpan of water

- sidewalk chalk.

Draw a target on the driveway or sidewalk and throw the wet sponges at it. Add up you points… or don’t! Winner gets to pick the next activity out of a hat.

I couldn't get a good picture of ours so here is one from a BuzzFeed article

2. Musical exercise-

You will NEED:

- paper

- cones, chalk or rope

- music

Optional are:

 - ball

- jump rope

- skip it

- hula hoop

- any other kind of activity equipment

Use the cones, chalk or rope to make a large circle and place any equipment inside. Write various exercises on pieces of paper (ex: jumping jacks, sit ups, bunny hop, jump rope etc...) and place them around the circle. 

Tell the children to go around the outside of the circle as the music plays at a walk, run, skip, crawl, crab walk or whatever you can think of. When it stops they should pick up the nearest paper and do what is on the card while you count 30 seconds then the music starts and they start walking around again. For little kids you could put pictures of what they should do on the paper. 

My kids lasted for 10 repeats of this with 6 activities in the circle, but needed several drink breaks!