Are you and your children always going somewhere and thinking about going somewhere else? Gather your family and have an old-fashioned family fun day. Spread out a blanket in the backyard and have a picnic. Make lemonade or fruit punch, fix your favorite sandwiches and homemade potato salad. If your children are little, bring a book to read aloud. Young children especially love books with repetition and patterns. Let your kids guess what will happen next and draw their own pictures.

Dig a garden
Have an It’s OK to Get Dirty Day. Wear old clothes and let your kids dig in the dirt. Little kids enjoy just getting their hands dirty and playing in the dirt. Let your kids dig a garden—even if your yard is small. Plant a vegetable garden or flower garden. Tending a garden is a great family activity, and it develops nurturing. With the change of seasons, plant new flowers or vegetables. Eating homegrown food is healthy, too.

Make mud pies
What happened to mud pies? Have a mud pie day with your child. Bring a couple of doll plates and your imagination. Pick up some twigs and make patterns in the pies. Add some leaves and pretend you are bakers. Some parents may worry this is all too silly, but it fosters creativity and thinking. When kids have fewer materials, they create and imagine.

Sleep and play in the yard
Camp out in the backyard. Bring out your sleeping bags and a blanket for nighttime star- gazing. Essential ingredients: s’mores and bug juice (Kool-Aid®.) Read a book to the kids and tell stories. Play charades, Ghosts in the Graveyard and Red Light, Green Light. For Ghosts in the Graveyard, everyone lies still on the ground except for “It”. The first person to move gets tagged. Remember Red Light, Green Light? You say, “green,” and everyone steps forward. You say, “stop,” and anyone caught moving is “It.” The goal is to tag the person before becoming “It”. Bring the game Twister outside and have everyone tangled up. Surprise the kids with a board game and play by flashlight. How about Sorry!®, Parcheesi®, Cranium©, Trivial Pursuit© and cards?

Build it
Build something together. What you build is not important; the building is. Make a tepee, a playhouse, a tree fort, train tracks, dollhouse, something that interests your child. Building something fosters teamwork, thinking, and self-reliance and teaches a good work ethic. Years later, your children will remember when…

So, let the car cool down, and create your own fun. Cost? Not a cent. Value: Priceless.

by Blair Koster