7 Frugal Ideas For Winter Fun With Kids

New York City has had its share of snow this winter. The cold weather can keep kids indoors most of the winter, and kids can get restless. Below are some ideas to keep your pre-school kids busy during the winter time. I've used most of these to some success and the variety of activities should keep most young children entertained for a little while. Older children may or may not take to these activities, let me know how it works out for you. Spending time with your children can help build their self confidence levels. I hope you are all doing your part in building the confidence in our future generations.

Without further ado, here are the ideas:

1. Crafts - Sock puppets, paper bag puppets, origami, are just the beginning. Kids have wonderful imaginations, just give them a bunch of cups and spoons and they can play restaurant owner for hours!
2. Puzzle books - My daughter has borrowed several puzzle books from the library recently. She loves them! We also have a crafts book that contains lessons in the alphabet and related activities she can work on. These activities include cutting out shapes, gluing, coloring, connect the dots, among others.
3. Baking and Cooking- Recently I decided to try making some noodles from scratch. Of course my daughter wanted to get her hands on some dough as well. Giving her a handful of dough kept her busy while I worked on my noodle making skills :)
4. Snuggling - Kids love to have one and one time with their parents, at least mine do. I have a feeling your young children also likes to have one on one time with you as well. Snuggling, hugging, or any close contact sport with the little ones can keep them happy and engaged. You'll run out of energy before they do, so you may want to use one of the other activities.
5. Watching movies / TV Shows - I have found the best shows for a pre-K child are on PBS. I've had great success with shows like Arthur, Caillou, Clifford, Curious George, Dora, Maya and Miquel, Sasame Street and many others. You can get most of these free over the air, or via your cable. Search for your PBS show times here.
6. Paint, Draw and Color - My daughter loves Dora the Explorer and Nick Jr. has some printable items for free. You can purchase a coloring book for a dollar at your local dollar store or discount store. This is great for kids who love to doodle and draw. A cheaper alternative is to just give your kids your used paper, the blank side makes for great scribbling paper!
7. Blanket Forts (caves) - My daughter loves to get under the sheets and play hide and seek under the sheets. Share some "quality time" with your kids and play with them under the sheets, it may bring out the kid in you as well!

Some ideas came from ABC2News' article by Sara Noel. All these activities require you to spend time with your kids, which I hope all you parents out there are doing. For additional activities, you can check out this blog post on KidCity Blog for free things to do with your Kids this winter! Thanks for contacting me with that tweet @nyc_mom!

What are your favorite indoor activities for kids? Share them with us in the comments. For additional links to frugal tips and tricks follow me on Twitter. If you would like to contribute to FrugalNYC in any way (guest posts, articles, ideas, interesting links, advice, financial assistance, or anything else), feel free to contact me via email. Click here to add FrugalNYC to your RSS reader or Subscribe to FrugalNYC by Email.

Photo by suneko

Origami - The Art of Saving Paper!

Its amazing what you can do with just paper. Origami is the art of paper folding. Its basic concept is to take a square piece of paper and make something creative out of it. One of the most popular is the paper crane.

I started my interest with origami when I was very young. Though it was only an interest I occasionally spent time on. This time, I started again because I didn't want to see so much printed paper wasted (office paper, ads, any other 8 1/2 x 11 paper).

There are many styles of origami, and recently I've found a great way to put nearly all waste paper to use, using a technique called modular origami. There are many videos on youtube showing different creations using origami, both traditional and modular. If you are at all interested, I suggest you check it out.

For great resources you can check your local library for origami books. You can check my library blog post about some good library branches to visit. The Donnell library has origami exhibits yearly if not more often.

Recycle, reuse, don't throw good paper away!

Do you enjoy origami as well? How did you get started in Origami?
What other creative ways of using "used" paper do you suggest?