100 Inexpensive Ways to Spend Quality Time with Your Kids

You don’t have to spend a lot of money to spend quality time with your kids. In fact, you don’t have to spend any money at all!

To help you stick to your budget while making memories with your children, here are 100 of my family’s favorite inexpensive activities. Most of these don’t cost anything – we’re a family of 14 on a fairly tight budget, so we definitely know how to have fun with less.

However, several of these activities do require a few supplies or the purchase of items you can use over and over again. So, they aren’t all 100% free.

And, if you need help finding time in your busy schedule to spend time with your kids, here are three quick tips:

Give each of your kids a day or two each week – then on their day, spend 1/2 an hour with them, doing an activity of their choice.
Work together – the job will get done faster, you’ll be teaching your children important skills, and you’ll free up time for fun.
Spend time together each morning. When you give your kids your attention early in the day, it can turn your whole day around!
Don’t think you have to have 30 or 60 minutes straight for it to “count.” You can have quality time together for a few minutes here and a few minutes there. Break it up throughout the day if you need to.

Now that you have a few ideas for how to get quality time with your kids, let’s dive right into what you can do.

Inexpensive Ways to Spend Time with Your Kids

To break this list down a bit and make it easier to read, you’ll find these activities broken up by type. That way, you don’t get overwhelmed looking at a list of 100 altogether. Instead, you can find a category and pick something from there.

Ready? Let’s get started with crafty ideas.

But first, my disclosure: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. And FYI, this blog post has affiliate links.

Inexpensive Kids Crafts

It’s amazing what you can create with a few pieces of printer paper, pencils, crayons, scissors, and a glue stick. (The pencils I linked to are some of our favorites! They smell so good, and the scent lasts a long time – they almost always end up in our Christmas stockings!)

With just a few supplies, you can:

Draw pictures
Color your paper, cut it into strips, and make a paper chain to count down to a special event.
Cut out shapes from colored paper and use it to create layered paper art (like in the picture above)
Work together to make a card for someone in the family
Create portraits of each other – you draw your child while they draw you. You may want to take turns posing for each other.
Cut the paper into squares and give origami a try.
Fold paper airplanes and see which one goes the farthest or does the best tricks
Make decorations for an upcoming holiday

Add a few more supplies, and even more possibilities arise. You can:

Turn a box into a rocket ship or a UPS truck
Create a paper-plate animal (lions are fun!)
Write a book together – you can do an ABC book, a silly story, or copy the style of your favorite author. Take turns creating each page, or let your child illustrate while you scribe
Create your own board game on a file folder
Paint rocks and hide them around your neighborhood for others to find.
Make a book together.

Inexpensive Active Play for Kids

If you want to get some more movement into your day, here are some of our favorite (and most inexpensive) ways to encourage active play.

Roll up socks and toss them into a laundry hamper (to make it more challenging, encourage each player to take a step back each time they make it)
Buy a couple of inexpensive dart guns (the X-shot ones work really well; we have several, and they are still going strong after years of play. Here’s a 4-pack.) TIP: Ask for darts from extended family members as gifts so you have plenty – they do break. And if you’re bored just shooting the guns, try one of these Nerf Gun Games.
Play hide and seek (here are some variations of this classic game to try)
Buy a jump rope and relive all your elementary school recess memories with your kids – I used to love double dutch and have taught that to my kids! This post has jump roping tips and game ideas.)
Turn on the music and have a dance party.
Set up an obstacle course using household objects.
Grab a balloon and play Keepy Uppy.
Play “What Time Is It, Mr. Fox?” (Here are some basic directions for this simple kids’ game, except we always said “Dinner Time” instead of “Midnight” when it’s time to run.)
Blow a bunch of bubbles together, and then run around and pop them.
Take a walk together as a family and enjoy the sights and sounds of your neighborhood.
Play catch with a ball (or rolled-up socks!)
Play Frisbee.
Set up a bowling alley inside and try to get a strike.
Have a pillow fight.
Play Floor is Lava.
Have a squirt gun fight (or use syringes instead of guns for a cheaper option!)
Try doing a 3-legged race or a wheelbarrow race.
Try juggling.
Play catch.
Give hula hooping a try – see who can go the longest or hold one up to let your kids jump through.

Inexpensive STEM Activities

Help your kids practice their critical thinking skills and creativity by offering regular STEM challenges. Here are some of our favorites:

Make a boat out of tin foil and see how many pennies it can hold
Build a flat picture out of LEGO bricks
Invent a musical instrument out of household items
Build bridges out of toothpicks and glue
Use Brain Blox Natural Wooden Blocks to build all sorts of things (like the robot in the picture above)
Try to build a catapult that’ll launch a marshmallow the furthest using basic household items
Make paper helicopters out of paper strips and a paper clip and do challenges with them to learn more about gravity and lift
See who can make the coolest marble run out of household items (like this: https://youtube.com/shorts/1cEpt4d5mOk)
Brainstorm ways to make a Rube Goldberg machine
Use dry spaghetti noodles and mini-marshmallows to build different structures.
Make a maze out of LEGO bricks (and run a marble through it)
Have everyone collect three random items from the house and think of a simple game that uses all three. Take turns playing everyone’s game

Inexpensive Community Activities

Depending on where you live, you might be able to have a ton of family fun in your community – on the cheap! Try looking for:

Visit the library and see if they have any upcoming events. Our local library always posts flyers in the elevator, and they have so many fun things!
Give everyone $2 to spend at a thrift shop and see who finds the best treasure.
Look for free museums in your area.
Go hike a local trail.
Check out events offered by colleges, museums, or other locations in your area.
Make a goal to visit all the parks in your area and rank them based on criteria you develop as a family. Which one has the best slide? Where is the best shade?
Check out local festivals. If you eat before you go or bring your own snacks, community festivals can be a cheap outing! Walk around the booths together and discuss the goods with questions like these: Which one would you most like to buy if money were no object? Can you think of anything you could make to sell at an event like this?
Search online for free things to do in your area. For example, we often go to the St. Louis Zoo, which has free admission and is only a two-hour drive for us. You might be surprised what’s available within a few hours of your location.
Pack a picnic lunch and head for a park.

Inexpensive Board (and Card) Games for Kids

My family loves board games, and we’ve accumulated many of them over the years. Often, we find fun games on clearance at Walmart, which is a great way to try new games without spending a lot of money. We’ve also found some that don’t cost very much. And of course, you can play loads of different games with just a standard deck of cards!

Here are some fairly inexpensive games to try (I tried to keep them to $20 and under – remember you can play multiple times once you purchase, so it’s a good investment – or do what I do and ask for games for Christmas!)

Uno
King’s Corner (play with regular playing cards)
Speed (play with regular playing cards)
Monopoly Deal (the fastest playing Monopoly ever!)
Trouble
Taco, Cat, Goat, Cheese, Pizza (so easy to learn and one that my teens love playing with their friends when they have a little bit of extra time)
Pitch (play with regular playing cards. This one is a bit more complicated, but I loved playing it with my Grandparents when I was a kid! Here’s a link to some rules for Pitch!)
Scrabble (play by the rules or just have fun building words)
Battleship (here’s an article with ideas on other ways to play.)
Go Fish
Golf
Chess
Checkers

Inexpensive Literary Activities for Kids

Help your kids build their literacy skills while having fun. Use these activities as a starting point:

Pick a chapter book and read aloud one chapter a day.
Play Story Bowl and take turns telling creative stories.
Character dress up (have everyone use things from around the house to create a costume of their favorite character)
Have family reading time where everyone reads their favorite book for 20-30 minutes and then tells the family about what they read.
Implement family writing time for 20-30 minutes each day.
Sing silly songs together.
Put on a play or skit (we love doing Reader’s Theater, where we just read from the papers and don’t have to memorize anything.)
Get a joke book and take turns making each other laugh at your jokes.

Inexpensive Kitchen Fun

Help prepare your child for adulthood by letting them spend time in the kitchen with you. Try these simple activities in your kitchen.

Play a simple version of Chopped by letting two or three people prepare a snack and letting everyone else be the judges.
Bake cookies (here’s a recipe for early readers.)
Decorate a cake.
Make popsicles.
See who can create the best smoothie.
Pop popcorn in a pan with a glass lid and watch the kernels dance before they pop.
Wash dishes together.
Ask everyone to organize a cupboard or drawer.
Make homemade play dough.
Look up a copycat version of a favorite restaurant dish and try to recreate it at home (I got this copycat cookbook when I was in high school, and the kids and I still enjoy using it!)
Have an ice cream social with neighbors or friends.
Ask your family for their favorite recipes and create a family cookbook.

Other Inexpensive Activities for Kids

These ideas didn’t fit neatly into any of the boxes above, so they’re going here. You’ll find a variety of ideas to try.

Find an interactive type of video on YouTube (we like doing Name the Song, Quizzes, and Try Not to Laugh ones.)
Have a spelling bee.
See who can name the most states and capitals.
Create a video greeting card to send to friends and family members.
Search for bugs in your backyard and examine them with a magnifying glass.
Take pictures of things extremely close up and challenge everyone to guess what it is.
Volunteer together. It doesn’t have to be a big, elaborate project – try asking an elderly neighbor if you can rake their leaves for them or help pick up tree limbs after a storm.
Get a pack of blank kites to color, then go fly them. (Art + Movement, yes please!)
Plant a garden and see what you can grow.
Build a fort and have a snack inside it. Then, encourage your kids to read in the fort.
Build a puzzle (we LOVE the LEGO puzzles. We’ve built this 1,000-piece one several times over the past two years.)
Have a movie (or TV show) marathon. We recently did this with Ninjago and watched several seasons over the course of a weekend.
Print pictures from your phone and work together to scrapbook them or put them in an album (I’m currently using the Snapfish app to get 100 free prints each month – well, I pay for shipping. It’s an inexpensive way to get some actual pictures that aren’t on a computer!)

Have Fun Together

There you have it, 100 inexpensive ways to spend time with your kids. Pick your favorite and go have some fun!

1Shares

100 Inexpensive Ways to Spend Quality Time with Your Kids