Stay at Home Moms
What activities do you do with kids?
We have to get out more! Right now I take Alaina to the park any day it's not freezing. There is an indoor toddler/preschooler play area (it looks like a pimped out version of a daycare play area) that I've taken her to a few times, but it's about 25 miles away, and I really hate to drive that far. I've already bought a season zoo pass, but it's still too cold for that.
Little Gym classes seem really high priced. Maybe I'm just cheap?
Any other ideas? My girl is super high energy and the more time we spend cooped up the more stuff she destroys and leaps she makes off the furniture. :P
*edited my title because it looked like a drunk post!
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Re: What activities do you do with kids?
Does your community over childrens classes? A local church? We found a local music class for FREE after DD turns one at a church down the street, it meets once a week.
Little Gym/Gymboree is not in our budget, so I had to get creative!
You can tell when we've been struggling with the cold, there's always homemade playdough on the table. Both my kids get really absorbed by this, even DD who is normally the can't-stay-still type.
I once filled a deep litter tray with birdseed and gave them loads of cooking pots and utensils. From their point of view it was a fantastic hour of so of absorbed play but the vacuum cleaner hasn't ever forgiven me!
We have several libraries really close to us and a few do puppet shows and magic shows... have you checked their calendars lately for anything other than story time?!?
Also, I used to do Gymboree's Unlimited Membership, which allowed Emily to come EVERY SINGLE DAY of the week as well as their Thursday "open play" 2-hour play date and that was only $89/month. WELL WORTH IT!
How about Music Together? It was $175 for a once a week class for 3 months the last time we took it and Emily just loved it!
Indoor mall playground?!?!?
We have a museum in Oakland called MOCHA that has drop-in art classes for kids that are like $12. These are awesome because she makes a mess THERE rather than here at home.
We also have a several awesome play cafe's where you can get breakfast and lunch and your kids can play for $5-7 for as many hours as you want to stay. Anything like that in your area?
What about indoor bounce houses? Emily freaks out over these!
Our local aquariums are $80 for A YEAR membership, Emily would go every day if I let her.
Good luck, girl!
eclaire 9.10.06 diggy 6.2.11
That sounds like a good idea! DS would love that, although some birdseed-eating would probably go down!
We go to the little gym and we have museum memberships. There is an indoor bounce house place near us that has an awesome toddler area so we go there once a week. I go to the gym everyday and he gets excited to walk into the daycare area.
He loves water so I have let him take a bath in the middle of the day (no washing!). Finger paint, homemade playdough, markers/crayons. He loves to help me cook so we make crockpot dinners together and we made cupcakes one day. He sits next to the bowl and pours everything in (except eggs of course).
ETA: To get out, sometimes we just go to Target and walk around. It is probably annoying to other people, but I walk behind him and he spends a good hour just walking down the aisles. He doesn't try to grab things, he just looks, squats down to get a closer look, and at the end, we grab lunch at target and go home. We also go to Petsmart (he loves it) and chick-fil-a/mcdonald's play places.