A guest post by Tina Summers, Editor of lovedbyparents.com, dedicated to all things that are lovedbyparents.
Family days out can be expensive, especially when you have more than one child. I wanted to highlight some ideas that have been low cost and very successful with our family. Here are our top five favorites.
1. ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’- Re enacting a well loved story has proved popular with every member our family from 4 – 44. All you need is a great sense of adventure. Take the children to the park and pretend you are going on a bear hunt. Hide behind trees, run through the grass, over the hills and back to base.
2.Draw portraits of each other. A great activity with results you can treasure for years to come. All you need is two pieces of paper and two pencils! You could sketch each other sideways, facing each other or even with just one hand!
3.Collages or pictures with materials around the house.
I have always been a great believer in recycling and what can be more rewarding than finding bits around the house to create a picture. We use foil, cotton wool balls, string from carrier bags, cereal boxes and even bottle tops to create collages or pictures.
4. Making a Den. The kids love this and have never got bored of it. We use 4 chairs, face them opposite each other and spread two sheets over the top. We use books to weigh down the sheets and place cushions inside. A Perfect den to read in or just play.
5. Baking Sausage Rolls. The girls love this. We buy the puff pastry ready made and simply roll it out onto the work surface. In a bowl, squeeze out the sausage meat from the sausages. Lots of fun for little hands! Then each take a ball of sausage meat and roll it into a long sausage. Place it inside the pastry, roll the pastry over, cut down the side and then into squares. Repeat until all of the ingredients have been used up, and place in the oven for 30 mins, at 180 degrees.
Whether it is playing Cats Cradle or teaching the kids how to play Thumb War, there are so many simple ways you can interact with your child. Sometimes all you need is a little imagination and creative play.
Some great ideas there. My children like to hang their works of art all around the garden and we are charged to walk around their gallery.
What lovely ideas! I particularly like the bearhunt one! And congratulations on a great post for Moneysupermarket – headed over here from your tweet link
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What fantastic ideas ,cooking and dressing up is always a fun way to keep the kids entertained well done .
Well I love to bake, pretend tea parties, dance and sing. My daughter Leylania is only 2 so she us easily entertained but I think it will get harder the older she gets as she will be wanting to go places that cost.
Reading this made me smile
We love doing these kinds of activities. They create the best memories. Quality time without the stress of being out somewhere busy, costing lots of money, is gold dust to both the parent and the children. Although sometimes the most obvious and easiest activies like the ones you have talked about are overlooked and as a parent you feel you have to go somewhere exciting, normally expensive, which is not true. We love making pizzas using readymade roll out pastry. My boys then pick their favourite toppings and they taste yummy. Thank you this, it was refreshing to read. I think we will be getting out our pencils over the weekend and drawing portraits of each other! 
Lovely ideas, we did the sausage roll one yesterday – so I was chuffed to see it on your list. We always do the den one, my kids absolutely love that one and their ages are 9, 8, 4 & 2 (eldest will be 10 in a few weeks). I’m finding it more and more difficult to do things that all the kids will enjoy, difficult to entertain an almost 10 year old with the same thing you are trying to entertain your 2 year old with – dens is one way of doing that as is baking/cooking
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I love the making a den idea, I have fond memories of doing that and kids just love it! Indeed you don’t need to spend a fortune to have fun
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Lovely ideas, I love to play games outdoors on a nice, dry day. My daughter loves any sort of art and crafts so we could combine the 2.
Hello everyone. Just got your tweet. Our family favourite is ‘Den Building’. Roll on more sunny weather when digging mud in the garden is hard to beat!
Fab ideas, thank you
Cool ideas, I love the Den idea the best
We love the bear hunt re-enactments, they take place everywhere!
Will be buying sausage roll ingredients for later today, as we seem to be running dry for ideas during these hols!
I agree about the expense and whilst Children think they want the “fancy activities” in reality they enjoy the simple things just as much for example; Tiddler Fishing (in safe supervised shallow clean stream) with some cheap nets. Walk around old ruins that don’t cost to enter, here they can use their imagination for free. Even just spending time in the garden can be made into fun with anything from a ball game to even making your own crazy golf course. Weathers good, money is generally short so lets get back to basics – and basics are normally the best.
You just can’t beat a good bug hunt! We go to the local woods and turn over old logs to look for creepy crawlies. Always remember to replace the log the way you found it so they still have their home.
The den was is the longest amount of fun, is fab in the garden on a sunny day, on a rainy day it just makes for a really fun time, my two loved it and often stayed in the den for lunch and to do jigsaws, reading etc.