10 cheap ways of entertaining kids on vacation

One thing about travelling with young children is the constant need to keep them entertained. Thankfully, young children are very easily entertained and don't really need us to shell out a lot of money for admission fees into places to have fun. In fact, most of the activities that we specially planned for them were tolerated but were obviously not what they would do if they had a choice.

It was amusing watching them come up with ways to entertain themselves. I had made it a point to leave them be rather than try to occupy them every minute of the day.

So this is what they came up with.

1. The one thing that I did bring and was thankful I did was a sampling of their books. They could sit and go through their books again and again as if it were newly bought. Jordan would create stories from the pictures in the books and would add in whatever experiences she had just seen into it for good measure. So, the little mermaid ate french fries and threw some on the ground so that the noisy gulls had something to eat.
























2. Helping round the house. We didn't let them do the dishes because the water was too cold. But they loved gathering dirty clothes and putting them into the washing machine. It helped that it was a front loader and next vacation, I'm teaching them to separate colours from whites.
























3. Every where we stayed, there were bath tubs. And the kids loved baths. All hours of the day, they would ask to have a bath. Even if they had just gotten out of one an hour ago and had finally just warmed up in front of the fire. As long as the water was relatively hot, they were happy to spend extended periods of time in it. Sometimes too long and they'd emerge, wrinkled like prunes.

















And when we had to plan things for them or take them out. We 'd head towards these things.

4. Visit the local playgrounds. Bundle them up if it is cold and then just head out and find a play area. We loved the swings because they all had safety harnesses and even little Muffin could sit on the swing and was loath to get off. Evan learnt how to spot the colourful playgrounds from the car and request we make a stop.
























5. Head to the seaside. Once they got past the fact that the sand was ice cold, they reveled at how fine it was and how it looked like powder. They also had fun at the water line, chasing the waves and squealing in delight at the sheer coldness of the water. Just be careful because apparently sharks feed at dusk and quite near the beach.























6. Chase birds. There's an inherent attraction to chasing birds. So ducks at the pond and gulls by the pier got chased. Of course, the birds could also turn around and chase the young 'uns. But that's another story for another time.
























7. Allow them to eat stuff they don't usually eat. I'm not talking about junk food although we did allow the twins french fries on one occasion. It's hard to stop them from eating the chips off the fish and chips especially when there were mountains of it! But they also kept themselves busy eating things like lemon wedges, butter and in Evan's case, tubs and tubs of yogurt. His record was 4 in a day.

























8. Playing with things they are not supposed to play with on a regular day. Of course, this doesn't mean allow them to get themselves into situations fraught with danger. But generally, baskets and blinds seem to be a great hit. I think it also helped that there was more than one of them, so they always had a playmate. Even Muffin, who had his adoring big sister sit in the basket with him and play 'row row row a boat' with him.
















9. Allow them to use the car as a playground as long as the keys aren't in the ignition and the doors are not locked. The twins take turns pretending to be driving and to be the passenger in the front seat. They engage in 'serious' conversation as us adults do and drive, honk the horn, flash the lights and fiddle with all the different gadgets. Why I say make sure the door is open? Once we shut the door by accident and Evan needed to pee. He couldn't get out so he peed on the seat. Not something you want to happen.
























10. One thing Perth and most other states in Australia has lots of is parks. Open spaces. Sometimes with lakes and ponds and fountains but those are bonuses that Evan looked forward to discovering. But give them any sort of open wooded space, they'd run around, chase one another, chase one of us, pick up sticks, pick up leaves, jump on leaves having discovered that makes a delicious crunching sound and of course, Little J would pick flowers. They would play pretend, picking up little imaginary spiders and snails, talking to them, feeding them leaves and ultimately being giants and eating them up with evil laughter and a loud fake burp to end it of.























And every night, they had no trouble going down to bed and would sleep peacefully through the night having been exhausted by their own games and dreaming of new ones for the new day ahead.

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