Do they offer any scholarships? Sometimes places like that have scholarships you can get to help with the costs. Wouldn't hurt to check into!

I am guessing that you are responding to my post about the cost of summer day camp. Yes, I was told that there are some scholarships and to write a letter. But I am not good at writing letters. I dont know what else to say besides I am too poor to pay for all summer for two kids let alone one.

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Nothing is as important as passion. No matter what you want to do with your life, be passionate.
Jon Bon Jovi

Sorry the way you wrote this just cracked me up!! LOL
Could you maybe say that you are interested in sending your children to the camp but with living on a tight budget you could only maybe afford to send one so your are inquiring about the scholarship? I know there are ladies on here that are good at this sorta thing! you have nothing to loose and it's free! It's worth a try!!

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You must do the thing you think you cannot do~
-Eleanor Roosevelt

Pretty much what the others are doing

1. kiddie pool in back yard
2. bike riding
3. the park
4. the library
5. i am buying discount movie tickets from my son's school ( you get like a whole summer's worth of movie passes for like 10.00)
6. VBS
7. I did enroll him in a couple of little day camps through our towns rec . I think i paid like 30.00 for 3 classes. It will be fun and get him out of the house
8. I have signed him up for swim lessons. This one is not cheap - it's like 45.00 for a month BUT i think that it is an important thing for him to learn!
9. I have to work part time so my son will go to the Boys and Girls some a couple of days a week.
10. We will have lots and lots of sleepovers, camp outs/ cook outs in our back yard. Since gas is so high we won't be going to the lake much
11. We live near a nature park so Dad will take ds fishing
12. picnics in the back yard

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You must do the thing you think you cannot do~
-Eleanor Roosevelt

-- We'll be frequenting the zoo a lot this summer, as we just got a season pass.
-- My in-laws (that live next door) bought a small plastic pool (not the itty bitty 4" tall ones, one that's a little bigger), so we fill that up and let DS splash around. It's even big enough for me and DH to sit in it if we want to cool down too.
-- There is a park right around the corner with a playground and a big soccer field to use his kickball.
-- we will go to the pool a couple times. It costs almost $20 for the 3 of us to get in, which is in no way frugal. Season passes are insane (in the $300-$400 range for a family!!!) so we're not getting one of those.

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~~Amanda~~ Mommy to one Little Man (3 1/2 yrs old), TTC #2

RE: Scholarship letter
Maybe you could just say something like "this is an opportunity I would love for my children to participate in, but to do that I would need a scholarship for them. Please consider us in your reviews of scholarship applications. We appreciate the activities you provide and would love to be involved" or something to that effect? It doesn't have to be long. Maybe you would even be able to volunteer one afternoon or something and offer that as a suggestion to help them out?
Another 'fun, family' thing, if you have a digital camera, go for a walk in the neighborhood and do a 'photo scavenger hunt'. Pick a subject like trees or leaves or birds or flowers (or what have you or let the child(ren) create the category.. red cars, i.e.), and find as many different ones as you can, and take a picture of them. Then later, as an educational back-up to that, try to identify them from the pictures. You could even do it as a summer scrapbook-type of project. Fun to see how many you can get and educational at the same time. And, FREE! Here, locally, we have what they call 'Music in the Park' and different musicians play once a week for two hours. It's free for the public and held in the local park. There are food wagons there you can purchase from, different styles, plus ice-cream truck etc but you are also welcome to bring your own food in. It's a lot of fun and totally free. Some people even get up and dance. We do the VBS thing, too and watch for discount days at the local pool (promotions, etc). Sometimes for example they will have like a canned food drive for the local food bank and admittance that day is 2 cans of food plus $2 or whatever. If they don't have that, you could maybe suggest it? Great for community involvement, gives them a good show in community too, and it's also affordable. Camping is fun, tho these days hard to be frugal at it, and drives are no longer frugal either at gas prices. Speaking of frugal, I just had a funny 'picture/thought' go through my head. On this subject, it made me think of an "Our Gang" show I saw once where the kids were putting on a backyard play and charged 5cents or something to get into it. Or dig out those socks that are long gone for mates and have them make puppets with stray buttons etc. and put on a puppet show. We like to do movies, sometimes too, set up the living room like a theater and pop some popcorn and invite a couple of friends. Game nights are also fun with board games and a large gathering of people, we do that quite often.
Has anyone ever done one of those 'host a mystery' things? I have one but haven't done it yet and wondering how hard those are. They sound kind of fun.

For the mom who is stuck indoors, I understand that as I used to live in that sort of heat. The library and used book stores have great science activities books that can be done in the kitchen. Gets messy but it is all cheap and the kids love it.You make things like playdough, rubber eggs, fizzing drinks and experiments, all sorts of things. Also, you can make sun prints, sun tea and sun jam outdoors and you only have to put it out there then can come in the house. Hours later you go out again to grab what you made. Many books have recipes for various types of paint you can make yourself with tempera(go to a teacher supply store) and then you add different things to the paint like cornstarch to change the texture and let the kids at it. I used to totally declutter rooms in the summer too and have my kids help. Make it into a game and they enjoy it.

I have a few ideas planned- of course a lot of them already mentioned! Here is a sample list of ours
1) camping-is fairly frugal WHEN you have all the supplies you need for it
2) library story time
3) Vacation Bible School
4) movies in the park for free
5) tons of crafts (I stock up on crafts for us to do at least one craft a week- even if it is home made gak, playdoh, etc.)
6) swimming (my mom's or 2 aunts pools)
7) camping (reasonable IF you have all the supplies already)
8) discount tickets to local amusement park
9) visiting local parks (including State Parks)