Save Money During This Economy Crisis With 3 Kid-Friendly Fun Summer Projects

Everyone can’t afford summer camp. During this economy crisis, the cost of summer camp seems even more out of reach for many families. Trying to send your children to camp could cost an arm and a leg, and it could completely blow your household budget.

But your kids can still have a fantastically fun summer without you parents having to spend money on expensive summer camps. You will just need to do some planning and coordinating to come up with alternative activities that will take the place of those summer camp times that they may be wondering about. Try one or all of these three summer activity options that could help parents save money even in this economy crisis:

Try matching up arts and crafts with your child’s summer time reading. Of course, you want your child to make plenty of times for exploring books and using their imaginations this summer, and with a new school year approaching, most educators usually tell parents to make reading a summer time priority. Instead of buying expensive books at the big stores, try the thrift stores and local discarded book sales where you can buy for cheap a busload of books that your child can enjoy. Plus, you could always go to the library where there are mountains of free books waiting for your child to grab.

To make the books come alive, you and your child can come up with some fun activities to do based on the book. Try this…if the book is about fish, you and your child could go fishing, make a fish dinner, or create edible art with those cracker “fish”. Be creativity and have fun with it. Just keep the activities simple and always buy for cheap and use frugal recipes.

Another great summer project is to have your child try their hand at operating a business. It doesn’t have to be anything too big, but let them be the boss and you just help them to make it work. From online selling through sites like EBay to possibly creating their own video game rating site, your kids may surprise with their entrepreneurial abilities.

Kids love to be outside. Selling something outdoors is lots of fun and it teaches kids very valuable life lessons about project management, customer service, how to buy for cheap supplies and other incidentals that they will need to make their business work. This type of experience is invaluable and time consuming. Therefore, they will spend lots of summer hours bringing it all together and actually working their new business.

Finally, you could have your child organize a fun neighborhood or community style competition or event. It could be something as simple as a hairstyling competition or a talent competition that the other kids can participate in for prizes that you can buy for cheap. Have your kids develop the whole competition, the stages or progressions, and to do all of the marketing using items that they can buy for cheap. Many families are feeling the crunch of the economy crisis and an event like this could offer some light, cheap fun that everyone will enjoy. Plus, with all of the kids in the area preparing to be a part of this event, they will all be spending tons of time doing something worthwhile that parents won’t have to pay for which would be great for saving cost-conscious families lots of money in the process.

Summer is a great time for projects like these. It doesn’t have to be just about summer camp. There are so many alternatives to camp that families can find to do, even in the midst of an economy crisis. Just be creative, get the kids heavily involved, and watch the summer time roll by while you enjoy this learning process and the fruits of your labor! Plus, everyone will enjoy all of the money that you will save from not sending the kids to summer camp!