Cheap Family Vacations: Your Activities Guide

During school holidays, finding activities that still allow you to have cheap family vacations is not all that easy. Many times we end up staying home because we can’t afford so go shopping or to the movies again!

Here are some ideas to stop the boredom and help you not to go insane!

1. The Great Outdoors

There are so many beautiful places you can visit that don’t cost you anything to be there. Parks, Beaches, Reserves, National Parks (some of those do charge small fees). You can keep it a cheap family outing by packing your own food and drink rather than buying from the over-priced kiosks.

2. The Shopping Centre

A Visit to the shopping mall should be avoided as much as possible. It’s one of those family vacation activities that see you making impulse buys. Especially when you have your children with you, it can become a very demanding time. So keep these visits to necessary times only with one planned treat to make them special.

3. Local Libraries

You’d be quite surprised at what can be found at a local library! Especially during family vacation time. And activities that are offered are VERY CHEAP because they are FREE!! There could be story book and craft sessions for younger children, and book lovers’ clubs for older children. They are also a great source of books, magazines, videos and DVD’s and even computer games etc in order to prepare for the quieter moments at home.

4. Check the local paper

Communities are very good at providing special family activities during vacation time so find out what is going on and be a part of it. There are street fairs, market days, school and church fetes and special holiday programs.

5. Check out your local environment.

Many towns have free tourist type of sights and activities that I bet you’ve never visited or seen because they are for the tourists and you are a local. Am I right? My husband has lived in our town for most of his life and I know there are places he has never been! Take this vacation time to visit the caves or the funny carvings on rock, or the monuments that you pass every day to work. Make it your mission to really know where you live and the stories that have made your town what it is!

6. Share your hobbies

Kids love to learn new things so take this family vacation time as an opportunity to teach them things you love. Is it a sport? Musical instrument? A type of craft or dancing? Since meeting my husband I have learnt to love spearfishing and Deer Hunting and he has already begun to teach my son (two and a half years old) how to walk quietly through the bush when stalking deer! And he LOVES it!

7. Rainy-day stand-bys

Now it’s time to get out those books, magazines and DVD’s you got out at the library! (or you can hire good video games for an entertaining cheap activity at video stores. It’s much better than buying them and you can update the game regularly!) There are some great board games out these days too and one of my favourites is Cranium. It’s a mixture of all the best: Pictionary, Charades, Rapidoh, Articulate etc…Very funny and active! Actually, maybe you can teach your kids a lot of the old games that aren’t very common anymore…checkers, chinese checkers, chess, Rummy and so on.

8. Playing with Imagination

One of the subjects I teach is drama and I’ve always loved the idea of my kids preparing little plays for the adults to watch, just like they do in Little Women. I may be waiting a LONG time for that!

But seriously, as a kid some of my best memories are playing treasure hunts and pirates or armies and shooting games in the backyard. We’d make up all our own treasure and maps and costumes and have a ball! Maybe you could take a tour of all the op shops one day and make a collection of dress ups for your kids to go crazy with! Usually one item can spark off the imagination for a great new game. If your kids are anything like I was, they’ll want the game to go on day after day and you’ll find it a very cheap vacation indeed!

If my children do want to do plays one day, I’m going to help them write the plays, we can have fun actually making the set and then get out the video recorder and record it as well (oh dear, I have the lesson plan for how it would work forming in my head already!)

9. Getting Away from it all

Grab your tent or borrow one. Head out to a National Park / State Park or a Caravan park if you prefer to have toilets and showers and do a bit of camping together. I have heard that one of the most common activities that bond families together are camping trips. Actually it’s not the camping that bonds the family together but surviving all the crisis’ together. When you get to the point where you can laugh about the incident without anyone still feeling angry and annoyed then you have just experienced the best bonding a family can experience!

Or if you seriously hate camping, sleep out in your back yard together, watch the stars (if you can see any for the bright lights of the city!), eat your marshmallows cold but at least do something different! (Maybe you can drag the kids back into the house once they are asleep so you don’t have to sleep on the cold ground all night too!)

10. Just be with each other!

Your children aren’t going to be with you forever and if you are on vacation, you have to admit, it’s a very small segment of your year. So enjoy each other’s company. Go for walks around the block, play the games your kids love to play (like lining up all the Thomas the Tank trains in a row and then knocking them over – important stuff like that!).

You’d be amazed at the conversations you have while kicking the ball around or doing a jigsaw together. Children really open up when you spend extended time with them and you have the opportunity to impart values and lessons that last with them a lifetime.

How is that for some cheap family vacations activities? I feel like I’m ready for holiday time to begin now. Let me get my schedule so I can start planning….don’t they say that’s best part anyway?

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