It’s the Easter holidays and the kids are home. They don’t want to sit around all day though, they want to get out and do stuff and have fun! Luckily we have access to loads of free entertainment and we made the most of it last week! I highly recommend looking at free facilities in your local area! You can save so much money and have lots of free fun! Here are 4 days worth of free activities for kids;

4 Days of fun with kids

1. Parks and playgrounds

There are lots of great playgrounds for kids these days. In Brighton and Hove we are lucky to have such a great choice of brilliant outdoor play spaces to visit. In fact there are so many there are loads we haven’t explored yet. One thing I really like about them is that they are all so different.

Although some play equipment is repeated each playground has its own original features and interest points. There are also some cool skate parks. Even though my heart is in my mouth watching my kids whizz around. I’m so impressed how they have taught themselves to go up and down the ramps. Last week we arranged to meet up with friends at a different park each day for 4 days. We drove to the parks we went to and all but one of them had free parking. The one that didn’t have free parking cost us £6.20 because it was fairly central to the city. If you don’t know where all the parks are in your area, take a look at your local council website. You might be surprised how many you have to choose from! To find out more about the parks in Brighton and Hove take a look here.

Museums

Museums are often free and are great for a rainy day. Lots of them are geared up to cater for young visitors and are extremely child friendly. We visited Hove Museum one afternoon. It is free to get into. (We paid £2 to park) They often have kids activities going on for a small fee. Even without specific kids activities we found they had booklets which encouraged the kids to look in the different rooms of the museum to find certain objects and then draw a picture of it or answer a question about it and so on.

They also have bags with postcards, torches and magnifying glasses in them and the idea is the kids look for the things on the postcards around the museum with the aid of the torch and the magnifying glass. At the moment they have a Star Wars memorabilia exhibition on and there are various toys and figures on display. There is a small dress up area with Star Wars costumes for the kids to try on. If you haven’t already sussed them out, I definitely recommend finding out about what is going on for kids in the museums in your area for a fun free educational couple of hours with the kids! To find out more about Brighton and Hove museums take a look here 

Libraries

Another fantastic source of free entertainment are libraries. In our city we have lots of libraribes and again there are so many that we haven’t visited them all! I used to take my kids to baby sessions at the library. Then I took them to story time in Hove library. Nowadays we go to the library most weeks and we borrow a small fortune in books on a regular basis! We have a few libraries that we can walk to from our house. This whiled away one afternoon with a walk to the library and back.

Lots of the libraries have dedicated sections for kids with play equipment, some have computers and most have comfy chairs. I relaxed for a bit on a comfy chair while the kids looked for books they wanted to borrow. I’ve been enjoying the books they chose to borrow as some of them were books that I loved when I was a kid. Recently we have been reading the Indian in the Cupboard and the Faraway Tree! It is well worth looking up what is going on in your local libraries as aside from offering books to borrow often activities are free or very cheap and it is a great way to meet people in your local area. Look on your local council website for more info and find out more about Brighton and Hove libraries here.

Food and drink

To keep costs down we either ate lunch at home or took packed lunches. As well as snacks and water in reusable bottles with us to the parks, library and museum. In total four days of entertainment cost us £8.20. Which I think it is pretty amazing for the amount of fun we had! The kids were happy as they had friends to play with and I was happy because I had adults to chat with. We all got some free exercise, free entertainment and had a really nice few days.

So why not give it a try. Make the most of what your local area has to offer for free instead of visiting expensive out of town attractions and take a packed lunch!

You stand to save a lot of money. It’s less stressful as you don’t feel pressured to enjoy the experience, and your kids are likely to be just as happy playing with their friends in a local park as they are anywhere else.   What’s your area like? Would you find enough entertainment locally to spend under £10 on 4 days of activities?