13 Free Entertainment Ideas

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When you are trying to live with stewardship in mind you often have to think differently than you may normally to have fun and entertain yourself.  Here are a 13 free entertainment ideas. (or Almost free).  Many of these things consider sunk costs, example number one assumes you already have a GPS or a smartphone.

1. Go Geocaching – What is Geocaching? It is a real world GPS scavenger hunt.  You use a GPS to find a set of coordinates where someone else has hidden a cache (usually Tupperware).  Our kids love it because you trade toys in the caches and they love to find new parks to explore.  We love it because it gets the whole family out of the house and doing something together.
2. Hit up the public library – You can just sit and read to your younger ones while your older ones check out all sorts of new books they have never heard of.  Most libraries have some sort of story time where the librarians of volunteers read a book to your kids.
3. Play a board game – We have an extensive collection of board games and we love to play.  Instead of going out and spending money find like minded people and have dinner together followed by some game time.  Trade games with people if you have ones you are done with or don’t like.  Introduce your children to the games you play instead of playing another round of Candyland.  Our kids love Settlers of Catan Jr. (And I like it better than the original)
4. Family movie night – This is a tradition in our house.  We either get new movies from the library or watch some of our favorites.  Make popcorn or a treat that goes with the theme of the movie, curl up on the couch and create memories.
5. Public parks – Find out what is happening at your local and state parks.  There are nature lessons and hikes, photography clubs and even geocaching gatherings.  You just have to know what is going on and when.
6. Set up a walking tour of your town – Local historical groups are a great resource then once you are started pack lunch make a map and take a walk.  History will come alive as you actually walk through the areas where events took place.
7. Take a photo walk – Take a camera and walk somewhere take pictures of anything you find interesting. It is amazing the cool things you drive by all the time but don’t notice.
8. Check out any number of free courses online – Coursera, iTunes, Openculture or others that will allow you to learn something new for free.
9. Take the day and clean up that one room – Not really fun but it really needs to be done.  You know that space that you have been meaning to clean out/up for a while but things just keep piling up?    Take a few hours and clean it.  You will feel so much better.
10. Learn how to fix something around the house – I really like to fix things(or at least try to) but I am not very confident on the how-to part.  You tube is great for that. Last month I drained my hot water tank to fix a knocking sound it had been making.  Just to your research and you may be able to fix it by yourself and save yourself the repairman bill.
11. Have a water fight(summer) – This was a great morning in our house.  We bought big squirters at the dollar store filled up a bucket and the four of us had a fight for about an hour.
12. Have a snowball fight (Winter) – If it is winter take some time to make a batch of balls and have a snowball fight.
13. Try new shows on Youtube – Youtube isn’t just for cat videos anymore.  There are actually networks of content being created by quality brands.  Try Geek and Sundry, Machinima, and more

What are things you do to entertain yourself for little or no money?  Let us know in the comments.