Friday Frugal Family Fun

...say that ten times fast! LOL

Crystal, owner and operator of one of my favorite blogs (MoneySavingMom.com), is having a carnival to share frugal (of free) family activities for the summer. When she announced this carnival earlier this week, I left a bunch of our best ideas in her comments section but I thought I'd re-post them here today and share with people who stop by here too.

So, this Viking family's idea of free or frugal family fun (can ya' tell I *love* alliteration! LOL) is the following:

Library summer reading program activities: magicians, animals, storytellers, reading time, crafts, etc.

Walk at the nature center or local arboreteum.

Free Wednesday brown bag lunch concerts at our city's outside band shell.

At the same band shell are free jazz concerts on Friday nights as well as two big band concerts on Sundays.

A park a week - we have several parks within our city and outer township limits so we pick one park per week to visit one or two times. Over 8 or so weeks, we've visited every one in the city!

Home Depot's and Lowe's free "kid project" days - Home Depot is first Sat of month and Lowe's is 2nd and 4th Saturdays.

Our city has an antiques sale the first Sunday of each month in the main downtown park and a farmers' market every Saturday - it's always free to browse and visit (LOL) but we often grab a buck or two in change to get homemade cookies from one particular farmers' market vendor.

Our homeschool and MOMS Club groups have play groups - sometimes several a week.

Camping in backyard (The Great American Backyard Campout (http://www.nwf.org/backyardcampout/) is technically June 28th but it's a good idea anytime! I even saw a cute idea in a recent Family Fun magazine on how to make an outdoor movie screen out of PVC and a sheet! LOL

Garage sale-ing and/or hitting Goodwill esp. the last Saturday of the month when everything is 50% off!

We have saved $15 a month for 4 months and popped for an annual membership at our local kids' science museum - worth EVERY dime on a rainy day. There is also another kids' museum an hour away that has free admission - just pay for gas which isn't too bad for us because we have family in that town so we're usually fed for free! LOL

A sprinkler, a baby pool at the bottom of a kiddie slide, some Popsicles, and some sunscreen is always a great way to "blow" an afternoon.

Go to your local fire station (it's polite to call ahead but we've even dropped by unannounced while walking home from something else) and you'll find some very proud firefighters oh so happy to show your little ones around! LOL

Crafts , crafts, and more crafts using recycled materials - mostly stuff you'd throw away anyway...search online and/or access books from "The Busy Book" series by Trish Kuffner!

Go geocaching! Free fun, tromping through woods, parks, beaches, etc. and a "prize" at the end. Just visited geocaching.com

On a closing note, I realize many of the preceding ideas are specific to my community but I'm a big advocate of throughly scouring your local paper for ideas! LOL You'd be amazed at what you will find!

If you are interested in additional idea, visit Crystal list of participants today!