OS things to do with children. CHEAP

Aries

The Word Game was one my Daughter liked when she was learning to read.
We made lots of large cards with simple words like cat dog Daddy,etc.in big red letters.
We placed these cards around the house,then sent her shopping for certain words.
We gave her a shopping basket and some coins.
If she started to get fed up the game stopped.But she became a good reader.

Pooky

Pasta necklaces, tesco value pasta at 19p a bag makes great necklaces....can paint the pasta first, add some glitter etc.

For little ones, give them a bowl and an egg......don't tell them what to do - see if they can work it out...great to watch their faces as they see the yolk and white emerge from the shell....great for language too as they try and describe what they see.

My DD's love typing out bits from books, helps their computer skills and concentration.

Finger painting, espeically if you have patio doors they can do it on - or in the bath on the tiles - use a decent water based paint that wont stain your grout tho.

Shaving foam is a good one too - give them a tray and a tin of foam (after all it's just soap) and let them squirt and make patterns on the tray.

Mini gardens - use a suitable tray or plastic pot, get them out in the garden collecting grass and small flowers and sticks to design their own mini garden.

When out at the park I challenge them to find 10 different leaves...must be from the ground and not picked off trees or bushes.

toozie_2

In the car, I'd gave a challenge of seeing 5 things, for example, a bike on top of a car, a horse box, police car, crane and cow in a field.

For every 'spot' you get a point, and the winner is the one with most points.

Now the girsls are 15 and 16, and we play 'Coronation Street or Eastenders characters'.
A sort of yes/no game until we guess who they are trying to be, they winner then pretends to be the next character. We had a great laugh one day, when I pretended to be one of Jack Duckworths pigeons!

[Deleted User]

I love it!!

so many cheap and free things to do

a sink full of water and washing up liquid bubbles. An empty milk bottle. My son used to spend hours looking down the bottle to the bottom of the sink. You could put some small things in the water and he/she could say when each one is seen

washing up liquid and some water and a twisted piece of wire to blow bubbles

we used to do mini plays of nursery stories

wigwam of garden canes and an old sheet

black-saturn

I used to get all my mums left over paperwork from the catalogue which she was an agent for and an old phone and pretend to be working in an office.

I also used to line up dollies on my bed (and I had about 30 of them) and play schools and teach them everything I'd learnt that day.

Sarahsaver

Pooky wrote:

Pasta necklaces, tesco value pasta at 19p a bag makes great necklaces....can paint the pasta first, add some glitter etc.

yes but have you seen glittery poo?:rolleyes:

my boys made these once at a playscheme, and the youngest, when he was still in the buggy age, sneaked a pasta bracelet and ate it glitter and all:)

thriftlady_2

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

silverfoxdude

We went for a walk in the woods, or you could go anywhere. Let them pick anything they want up (providing its not needles or something nasty like that!) and make a collage

We used a long length of wallpaper and layed it out on the floor. Stuck it all down, where ever they wanted and displayed it in the hall way

Glad

there's some great games on this thread as remembered by MSE members from when they were young

Glad

what I used to love was being given my mums old catalogue to cut out

I used a scrap book and made a page for each room, cutting out furniture people and clothes