Frugal Family Fun
"It is by small economies and cares... that large economy is attained. One does not, in a household, make some great fifty, or a hundred, or two hundred dollars saving, but it is the little saving of five, ten and twenty-five cent pieces, of half dollars and dollars, which in the year mounts up to a goodly sum total, and these savings represent not meanness, but care." "~Aunt Sophronia"
Some families can imagine no more interesting entertainment than dinner out and a movie, nearly always on payday, because, after all, who can afford to eat out in between paydays? While it is can be delightful and fun to eat out, and certainly there is nothing wrong with it, it's not the most original way to spend and evening. Furthermore, if you can ONLY afford to go out to eat on payday, then you really cannot afford to go out to eat at all.
Below you will find some ideas for family fun tried and tested ourselves or by somebody we know. Some of them will add that culture thing to your family time. Some of them are just plain fun. We do NOT do all of these things every single month- or even every single year. They are things we either HAVE done at one time or another- some of them I'd forgotten about and want to do again- or they are things I know friends of ours have done. Please, please, I beg you not to look at this as a check list of things you must do to be the Right Sort of Family. It's a list of fun things to do with a family that make use of what the family may have available- what's in your hand. Use it as a starting place to brainstorm and create your own ideas for YOUR family.
Instead of eating out, fix a fancy dinner at home. Set the table with the best dishes and candles. Have everybody dress up and pretend to be eating out, practicing table and restaurant manners.
Invite people over often. Make sure to include interesting, fun people; eccentric, odd people; tourists, immigrants, and unusual people. Include old people with stories to tell and young people with dreams to share. Include missionaries, former and current. Include your minister and the elders of your church. Ask for stories of faith, stories of when God blessed them, and stories of dark days. Let them do the talking, and prompt them with questions. Show them you are interested. Do a lot of listening. And serve good coffee.
Art museums often have free days. Check out the one nearest you. We’ve often taken advantage of this, even when the museum was an hour or two away. We packed a nice picnic lunch and ate at a park when the weather was nice, in the car on the way home if the weather was ugly. Always keep your eyes open for free or inexpensive attractions. Start a folder with information about such places and events.
~We like to bring brown paper lunch bags and fill up the bags with our snack items- things like carrot sticks, fruit, chopped wedges of cabbage, popcorn, celery sticks, crackers, cheese, slices of sausage, nuts, raisins, home-made cookies, dried tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes. The Headmaster likes to eat raw green onions. You can usually pick up dried prunes quite inexpensively at the local dollar store or discount grocery.
We like sandwiches in pita or pocket bread best, because the filling isn't so likely to fall out.
Sometimes I make sandwiches at home and freeze them in advance. Other times I just pack the fixings. A favorite lunch is miniature shish-ka-bobs. I set out olives, pickles, cherry tomatoes, cubes of cheese or sausage, mushrooms, and canned pineapple chunks. We supply toothpicks or pretzel sticks and napkins. Each person makes their own miniature shish-ka-bobs on the toothpicks or pretzel sticks (the pretzel sticks tend to break unless you poke holes in the food first).~
We buy a year's family pass to a different attraction each year. It may be the
zoo, the children's museum, the children's theater, or the symphony. We can't
afford to do them all at once, and with a family our size the cost of a yearly
pass is seldom more than it would cost us to get in once, so we choose one each year and immerse ourselves in that one, attending as often as we can squeese it in within a year. When the five oldest were smaller, we would have all family birthday parties at that year's family pass location.
Study another country/culture in your homeschool once a year, learning the customs, meals, holidays, and so on, and incorporating something of your studies into your daily live- meals, dress, a particular custom or phrase.
Study art and artists using old art calendars. Hang up works by a particular artist each month, discussing the paintings and the artists.
Take advantage of NPR and other radio stations. Listen to classical music all the time, studying the lives of composers at the same time.
Call local colleges and ask if there are any international students who would like a home-cooked meal with an American family.
Volunteer at the nursing home. We have met natives of several different European countries in a small Midwestern nursing home (I won't embarrass myself by trying to spell them, they are countries that seem to have lost all their vowels).
Read, read, read. Spend lots of time at the local library. Once we lived in a home that was not was not very near to any library. Paying the extra fee for a library card was my birthday present from my husband one year, and I loved it. Start your own library (making use of those library booksales).
Every once in a while the older children and I get out the Shakespeare and read it aloud together, each taking a few parts.
My husband chooses a different classic to read aloud to the kidlets at bedtime. He’s done Pilgrim’s Progress, Farmer Boy, Bread and Butter Indian, some of the Childhood of Famous American books, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Princess and the Goblin, and many, many more.
Vacations? As a military family every time we moved we tried to make part of the move include visiting an interesting spot. We did stay in two locations for five years each so we took lots of short jaunts to places of local historical or environmental interest. We prefer camping to staying in motels (family size, again. With a family this large most hotels want us to pay for two rooms. We won't be moving any more, and vacations will be less frequent. Most people live for years in the same place and never do visit all the attractions. Spend time getting to know your local sites.
Have poetry recitations at home.
Plant a garden, perhaps an historical herb garden.
Start a collection together. Collect sea shells, stones, or pressed flowers- be pretentious and label them with their Latin names.
Many libraries in larger cities like Chicago and Boston hold passes to museums and
other educational attractions and sign them out to local residents. I've never lived in a city that did this, but others have told me it's available where they live.
If you live near a college, look into their music and drama productions. Sometimes tickets are very inexpensive. Sometimes you can attend rehearsals for free.
Host a hymn singing.
Learn origami together.
Home recreations and amusements... serve to attach the members of the family more closely to their home. Encyclopedia of Household Information: A Compendium of Facts for Easy ...
Pull up midi files on the computer and sing around the computer. Watch youtube videos- you can find some really interesting ones.
Tell stories to each other.
There were some terrific science activities at this site.
Look for board games and card games at yard sales and learn to play them as a family. You can adapt almost any game to include all ages. Play in teams, let small children be in charge of moving pieces, rolling the dice, setting the timer, or putting down the cards you pick. Friends of ours play Apples to Apples with a nonreader in the family. He just throws out any card he feels like. Everybody knows which card is his when it's the only one unclaimed. They say often he wins because his random choice is just as fun as the ones the readers have picked.We've found some absolutely wonderful group games at this website
Frost cookies together, have a contest to see which is best.
Bake bread together- and bake the bread dough into interesting shapes (for years we never had play dough, I just made extra bread dough and let the kids mess around with a bit of bread dough each week). Then we baked their shapes and they ate them). This is a great recipe for this recipe for refrigerator dough if you want a large batch of make-ahead dough.
Turn out the lights, get out a flashlight and practice hand shadows. Watch hand shadows on youtube.
Read, read, read. Discuss what you read together. And then read some more.
Sometimes a small town will have a volunteer band or orchestra- see if yours does and find out about free performances.
Get on GoogleEarth and so some virtual exploring.
Friends of ours spread out maps on their dining room table and then cover the table with a clear plastic cover (from Walmart's fabric section). It is a regular center for discussion.
Currently, we have a card table with a puzzle on it in our dining room. We are not actually huge puzzle people, and I am surprised at how much fun we're getting from this. Since we aren't puzzle people, the largest puzzle we've tried is 500 pieces. None of us can resist stopping to try and put in a piece or two. Naturally, our puzzles come from thrift shops.
These are just a few ideas- I'd love to hear some of yours.
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4 Responses to “Frugal Family Fun”
February 1st, 2008 at 8:10 am
That is a great list! I bookmarked it for future reference. Thanks!
February 1st, 2008 at 12:25 pm
[...] Frugal Hacks post by Deputy Headmistress, “Frugal Family Fun,” is one that I highly recommend for Monroe on a budget [...]
February 1st, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Great great list of ideas!!
February 3rd, 2008 at 5:17 pm
This is such a wonderful list. I know how much work these things take so I really appreciate all of the ideas. Thank you for sharing- I look forward to reading your contribution each week!
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