Can you entertain your kids for one dollar?

At my parent's house I noticed that my kids are always drawn to my dad's memo pad- one of those cube-shaped kinds that has something like 1,000 sheets. They always "write tickets" or notes or draw pictures and pass them around to whomever they came. They love it.

Last week at the Dollar Store I bought a similar cube of paper for $1 and brought it home. I put it out on the kid's play table with a jar of colored pencils, and they have played with it every single day since then- writing tickets or drawing little pictures or cutting up the sheets with my decorative edge scissors. It has literally entertained them for hours.

Another $1 purchase with a high entertainment value: a plastic set of three funnels. I originally bought a set to pour things like bulk rice into jars, but the kids will spend hours with a bucket of water, a few misc. containers and the funnels.

One last big bang for the buck: unscented shaving cream (Equate brand from Walmart). One can will last us forever, and the kids love to "paint" with it in the bath tub. I give them paint brushes and have to pry them out of the tub twenty minutes later. Cost: $ 0.79

Granted, my kids are young, and it doesn't take much to entertain them.

Can you entertain yours for $1?

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I don't believe in miracles; I depend on them

Those are GREAT ideas!!!

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~~Ember~~
Mommy to Bailey 10/02, Brooke 9/04, & DJ 6/06

Are you kidding at 13months playing with a use toilet tissue role is entertainment for little bethy.

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Kimberly Proud Mommy to Bethany Rose April 2006 &

Organizer of the Coupon Clippers of Tacoma

Well, my 4 yr old was entertained for hours today with a dvd from the library! That was free!

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~Happiness is a large family~

Everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger. James 1:19

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. 1 Corinthians 9:24

Sidewalk chalk
Crayons
Free coloring sheets of the internet
Free movies at the library
Free books at the library
Paint
Water balloons
Free splash pads
Card games
Puzzles
plenty of free internet sites for children
make a home movie

Park
Grandpa's house
Walmart $1 dvd's (the kidsongs ones are always a hit!)
A nice long walk
My son loves to look out the window and watch the neighbors
Paper and pen (my son the 2 year ols artist)
MS Paint (on the computer)
Folding laundry is entertaining for them
Running around the house chasing each other
Pretending to cook
Sock puppets

I can go on and on. The best things in life are free.

What is a splash pad? Sounds fun

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I don't believe in miracles; I depend on them

The city put these in throughout the city. Picture a soft ground so kids don't get hurt if they fall down with water that shoots up from underground, kind of like a giant sprinkler. They also have different arches that spray water as well.

I don't know if videos count. I get paid for mystery shopping, so I get paid to rent videos, and since I never have time to view adult PG and up ones, we usually opt for the kids' ones.

I also give the kids printer paper out of our ream and they go to town w/drawing and making books! DD goes on for quite a while being tinky winky from Teletubbies w/a bag and giving her animals rides in her wagon in the house.

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Make someone's heart smile today.

Can dark get darker?

I thought this summer that I needed to make sure we had a full deck of cards. I want to teach DS how to play Euchre. We will be babysitting a 6 mo. old at the baby's house three days a week, and I thought DS and I could play cards while the baby sleeps . . . . When I was a kid, we knew every card game by age 10, and my DS knows very few -- darn that TV!

We also get a cheap kite and those little balsa airplanes every summer. They entertain for as long as they last!

A pack of water balloons is also great fun! It takes a while to fill them up which occupies the kids for the afternoon.

Remember folding newspaper hats? We like to do that and decorate them.

Also, a big rubberband and a forked twig make a great slingshot. We buy a bag of dried beans for ammunition (we lost a window once when the ammunition was rocks . . . .).