You don’t have to spend a ton of money to have a great summer with your kids – in fact, you don’t have to spend any extra money at all if you don’t want to. All you really need is each other and a plan for activities! Check out these 20 Frugal Summer Activities For Kids without breaking the bank that will create memories that last!
20 Frugal Summer Activities for Kids Without Breaking The Bank
Outdoor Summer Activities
It’s always nice to get back outside when the weather warms up. Your kids will love making memories with these outdoor summer activities.
Plant a bee garden. Teach kids about the environment and life cycles by planting flowers for your local bees in your yard!
Make ice chalk for a fun new way to create works of art in your driveway.
Make a butterfly feeder. You probably already have everything you need to build a feeder that attracts butterflies to your yard!
Paint a bird feeder. Kids can add a personal touch to an inexpensive wood bird feeder by painting it.
Tie dye tee shirts with natural dyes. Did you know that you can make natural dyes from foods? Use them to tie-dye tee shirts!
Play in the sprinkler. Don’t have one? Make one!
Make a wind chime. Found objects and strings are all you need to create a cool wind chime to hang up. Try rocks, pottery, or shells.
Wash the car. Get yourself a free carwash! Have the kids go to down on in it with lots of suds.
Do a nature scavenger hunt. Put together a list of things to hunt in your backyard.
Have a picnic. Take lunch or dinner outside and enjoy a favorite past time!
Rainy Day Summer Activities
Don’t let rain stop your summer fun! There are plenty of indoor summer activities to keep your kids busy, too.
Follow a summer reading program. Keep kids reading even when school’s out all summer long with a summer reading program.
Make an indoor race track. Use masking tape to create a track for toy cars on the floor.
Make cookies. Take advantage of the cooler weather and have a bake-off!
Write to a penpal. Send letters and drawings to relatives or family friends.
Create a scrapbook. Keep track of summer memories by capturing them in a scrapbook.
Make a time capsule. Put tokens of the summer in a time capsule to revisit in the future. Don’t forget about it!
Camp inside. Set up a tent or blanket fort in the living room, make s’mores, and have an indoor camp-out!
Play dress up. Gather scarves, uniforms, and hats for some pretend play!
Plant a bean in a jar. Plant a bean in a clear jar and track its progress as it grows.
Create a “TV show.” Practice some creativity! Take some video of stories your kids make up and put together a TV show.
More Rainy Day Activities for Kids!
Looking for some more summer ideas? Check out my Summer Bucket List For Toddlers and Pinterest Board below!
Follow ABC Creative Learning’s board Celebrating Summer on Pinterest.
As you can see the imagination to have an amazing summer without emptying your pockets is not that hard. All that matters is that your children are having the time of their life and spending time together making memories.
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If you loved these 20 Frugal Summer Activities for Kids, then you will also love the following summer posts I have put together for you:
What other frugal kids friendly activities do you like to do during summer?
Those are all great ideas and I think I will be doing at least a few of them. I am determined to make it an awesome summer for my boys this year 🙂
Awesome ideas. Simple activities yet fun. I’ll do one of these a week for the summer. It will surely keep my little one entertained for a while. Create a TV show sounds fun.
Yes it will 🙂
We love to go for walks. We live in Georgia so our entire world is a bee garden. And a butterfly garden, too!
Oh, I bet it’s beautiful!
Ice chalk? Boy have I been in a the shadows. I need to find out how to make that. You have alot of great tips here. Ice chalk is one I have never heard of.
Super easy and fun!
So much fun things to do! I like the ice chalk idea! I need to head over and find out how to do it. These are all great ideas for summer fun!
Hope it keeps your kiddos busy!
These are all great ideas. I love the tie dyeing tshirt idea for outside!
My girls would love that!
This is a great list!! We were just talking about ice chalk at my daughters 2×2 class yesterday! That is definitely on our summer bucket list!
It’s definitely an easy and fun craft to do!
Going through this list with the kids would be so much fun. The summer reading program was always a big part of our summers.
Wow I used to love writing to my penpal. I forgot about that… it was so awesome to hear back too. 🙂 You’ve got a good list here.
It such a great way to get kids to practice handwriting as well during the summer days 🙂
Wow so many awesome choices. Going to save this so I have some ideas! Summers get pretty boring quick around here!
These are all great things to do with the kids in the summer. We used to love going to the beach. I loved doing a tie Dye day at least once in the summer.
My daughter loves anything with water! I can’t wait for summer so we can have some fun in the sun.
These are all great ideas!! I really like the ice sidewalk chalk and the time capsule.
I had pen pals! It was so much fun when I was younger to get snail mail surprises.
I do some of these activities with my kids during the summer. We also go to the woods to explore most of the times.
Oh, nature walks! Fun!
These are all awesome frugal summer activities for kids. I love that you have here indoor and outdoor activities. We used to play with the sprinkler when we were kids all the time. Thanks for sharing.
Here in Florida it can get so hot that sometimes we need to stay indoors 🙂
Thanks for this list. With summer fast approaching I need ideas!
You are very welcome 🙂
These are great summer activities to do. It gets pretty boring for my kiddos after a month in the Summer so we will have to try these this year.
Glad you liked the list! Let me know how it goes 🙂
I love all of the wonderful ideas that you shared! My children and I definitely will be trying out some of these ideas.
Wonderful!!
These are all great ideas! I love that you’ve included rainy day ones too, as it’s always those days that are the hardest. I’m collecting ideas for summer time now so this was a perfectly handy post to stumble upon. I’ve pinned it, thanks! 🙂