6 Comments

  1. Oh wow Penny, you’re doing an amazing job of doing cool, free stuff with HP. I feel like we haven’t been very frugal parents, or very good parents during this time. We’re mostly managing the best we can but the 4 year old has watched quite a bit more PBS kids than we ever would have felt comfortable with 6 months ago. But she’s doing fine. And she’s super into space and astronauts after watching Ready Jet Go.

    My best frugal family moment was biking out to a park with the kids where they had some road construction debris and they spent hours smashing rocks to find “crystals”. (there were small pieces of quartz in the rocks). And I’ve trained the 4 year old to ride her bike next to me while I run. That’s such a small window where a kid’s biking speed is close to an adult’s running speed. 3 months or something? Luckily I’ve managed to catch that with all three of them now.

    Happy Memorial Day!!

    • I am so glad I let go of that “too much screen-time” hang up! If I actually clocked it, I don’t think it would be THAT much more. But he’s honestly learned a lot and I’m not going to manufacture stress when life is stressful enough!

      I love the idea of them mining for crystals. I don’t want HP to grow any faster than he already is, but I can tell that there’s so many fun memories to be made. Bravo to you for all the running you must be doing, too!

  2. I am so happy that you differentiated between educational screen time and pure entertainment.

    Unfortunately a lot of that educational television starts to become hard to find at around the second grade it seems.

  3. We’re getting in lots of the “unstructured free play” that childhood experts say is so good for kids. And it has resulted in very strange, but funny, sibling games. The latest is where 5 yo rides 8 yo like a horse, using pants as reins and brandishing a Barbie sword demanding I do various things in the name of the king.

    We grew caterpillars into butterflies–not free, but not too expensive. Biking, nature, dirt digging, backyard camping, baking, art, reading, board games, and increased screen time. Sounds like we’re all kinda doing the same things.

    Desperately miss free public spaces (playgrounds, libraries, and pools, especially).

  4. Hi Penny!

    I know, it’s been too long. Just wanted to say hi and thanks for these resources. We’re all about the free and frugal summer entertainment, but our usual list has been cut very short this year. The kids are BEGGING to go to a playground. Just. One. Little. Playground 🙁

    Good luck and best wishes.

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