I’m pretty much the master at entertaining children for $3 or less, mostly because for the past 6 years every single one of my jobs has been geared towards camps and daycamps for underprivileged kids, aka - mostly nonprofit so we had no money to work with. Most of these ideas are for kids under the age of 9 and generally speaking… ones that have yet to have their brains warped by television.

The following is super duper cheap stuff to do to entertain kids… some are for just one kids, others you can do with like 40 kids. …However the easiest thing with a group of 20+ kids is to play capture the flag or soccer. If you’re inside two words: dance party.

• Scrap booking: This might sound a little boring at first, but I assure you… the whole "cut-and-paste" thing works wonders with kids. Grab some old magazines and tell them to try and make a dinosaur out of pictures of other things.
• Grocery shopping: Not real grocery shopping, but save all your old boxes and jars. Set them up all over the house or where ever and let them go "grocery shopping". You can do the same with clothes and toys. Try to play out different scenarios with them
• Doctor: give them toilet paper and anything is turned into a horrible broken bone that wont heal for years.
• toilet paper men: Save all your old toilet paper rolls, and when bored time comes around… break em out with a few markers and scrap paper and make toilet paper people. …I still do this.
• Giant boxes!: NEVER under estimate the fun that a cardboard box holds. …Especially when turned into a car.
• Gardens: grab a plastic bowl or a plate or something and fill it up with dirt. Send the kid out to the yard to find sticks, leaves, things to plant etc… Plant a few soy beans in there just so the kid doesn’t get dissapointed when their walnut doesn’t spring into a tree.
• Playdough: 2 cups of flour, one cup of salt, one cup of water and one table spoon of oil… add food coloring to make it colorful
• google up some magic tricks.
• "never can tell" games:there are so many of these and I dont even remember 1/2 of them. But they’re really easy to make up. ..Basically you do something that has a ‘trick’ to it, and they have to figure out the ‘trick’ if they want to be in your ‘club’.
  • The best one, I think, is called "Crossed or Uncrossed". This requires 2 sticks, you hold the sticks in the air crossing them or not and announce that they are "crossed" or "uncrossed" but not based on how the sticks are, but if your legs are crossed or uncrossed.
  • Another good one is "bang bang" you point a gun and say "bang bang bang" (say bang as many times as you want) "who did I shoot?" the kids will start throwing out answers, but the real person who you shot was the first person who spoke.
  • One more is "going on a picnic" you say "my name is Katie and I’m going on a picnic, I’m bringing an elephant" …the trick in this case is that you have to bring something that begins with the last letter of your name. The easiest one here is to do a thing that begins with the first letter of your name
• forts: its a wonder what 8 blankets and all the pillows in the house can make.
• obstcal courses: throw a bunch of shit all over a room and say "ready-set-go" with some reward if they can beat their time the second time they go.
• chuck the sock: put a sock into another sock. make two teams. one team throws the sock then huddles together while one team member runs around the group of people. The other teams bolts it as fast as they can toward the sock. They get it they scream "chuck the sock" and throw the sock. They then huddle together and a team member runs around them. The team keeps track of how many times the runner got around the group. The group with the most laps wins (but lets me honest, just make it a tie.)
• sing songs: i could list here a million and a half camp songs, but you wouldn’t know the tunes. But kids love songs. Some day when I’m feeling ambitious I’ll create a nice big collection of recorded camp songs.
• Education: start showing them really cool things. Kids are interested in biology and science. There are so many at home science experiments you can do that kids just love.
• Scavenger hunts: make a list of pretty random things that you know they can find inside or outside, give them the list and tell them to go nuts (or read them things off the list)
• Parks: almost any kid can be entertained for a long while in a park.
• side walk chalk!: it was my favorite thing in the world to play with when I was a kid
• Puppets: you can make them out of socks, paper backs, peices of paper on a stick, boxes…whatever. Then you can make puppet shows.
• musical instruments: a kleenex box + elastic bands = guitar. Anything + 2 sticks = drums. toilet paper rolls + rolled up peice of paper making an increasingly smaller hole = horn. toilet paper roll + rocks + a peice of baking sheet over each end with elastics = shaker. annoying, but fun.
• dress up: let them raid your closet. (if you just got uptight about that… you need to loosen up! )
• Boats: where i live, Victoria BC, there are a lot of boats that facinate kids. Don’t over look the ‘touristy’ things in your neighbourhood. The smallest things entertain their minds.
• Rock collecting: …rocks are COOL!
• Mystery time: set up a mystery… like, put something covered on the counter, but then have it ’stolen’ and go on a hunt for it (hide it in the closet or bury it outside…) by leaving clues all over the place by the theif. Then make the theif your significant other, sibling or neighbour…the kids reaction to this is priceless.
• Papier Mache: the easiest things to do with papier mache are volcanoes over top of the bottom of pop bottles, or masks. …To do the mask, just put papier mache (newspapers soaked in a mixture of glue and water… yes, its messy.) all over a balloon. Leave the balloon to dry (over night usually) and then pop it. Then you can decorate the mask and even cut holes into it for eyes and stuff. This is super cool becuase the texture and weight isn’t something they’ll be used to having created.
• "our day" creation: go out on a good long walk collecting leaves, grass, stick etc. and then go home and make something out of it. It will be a sculpture to remember your day together.
• Mobiles: get a clothes hanger and some string. Tie about 10 strings all over the clothes hanger (more fun if you distort the shape) and encourage the kid to put pictures of what they like, or poeple they like or whatever on the end of the strings, then hang it up and its a thing all about them. sweet.
• Moster Dice: Asign each number of the dice to a body part. Throw them up, and then draw whatever number they land on. You could end up with 5 arms and 8 heads.
• Memory games: Show them a table full of things and then take a thing or two away when they’re not looking. See if they can recall what has been removed. Or… memorize something useful… like states or capitals or countries. Too many kids don’t know their geography!