Family Activities for Memorial Day Weekend

BY ANDREA TRAVILLIAN, Originally posted on The Balance 

Memorial Day is coming up, and it is a great time to spend quality time with your family since the kids are out of school and many people have the day off work. Are you worried about sticking with your budget while planning a fun activity at the same time? Planning a fun family outing doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to spend a lot of money! Here are some low-cost Memorial Day activities that you can enjoy:

Build a Campfire and Make Tinfoil Dinners

Now that the weather is starting to warm up, it is the perfect time to get outside. Kick off the season with a campfire, and keep it simple by planning tinfoil dinners to eat. You can plan a full weekend of camping, or just head to a day-use area for a few hours. Many locations have day-use parks that are within driving distance, and it is often cheaper and easier to plan a day activity rather than trying to organize a full weekend of camping.

Have a Picnic

If you want to keep it simple, pack a fun picnic and head to the park. Find a shady area where you can lay out a blanket, and bring some outdoor toys to play with. Relax, play catch, or let the kids run around while you read. A day at the park is the perfect way to get outside and have fun together.

Arts and Crafts

Is it too stormy to spend your Memorial Day outside with the family? Plan an indoor arts and crafts session where you can let your children’s creative imaginations run wild.

Provide cheap arts and crafts supplies, such as paint, popsicle sticks, pom-poms, or anything else that you dig out of the back of your closet. Make sure to lay down newspaper on the table to make it easy to clean up the mess when everyone is done.

Family Movie Night

It can be expensive to take the whole family to the movie theater, but it is possible to have a fun family movie night at home. Visit Redbox for a cheap DVD rental, or look for a $3.99 or $4.99 rental on Amazon that can be streamed on your TV. Another option is to choose a movie on a subscription service that you have, like Hulu or Netflix. Find a newer release that your family has been wanting to see, and plan a special meal or snacks to make it a fun. Spread out a blanket on the floor in the family room, and make it a festive event.

Go Star Gazing

Spending time outside doesn’t mean that you need to go out during the day. Kids are fascinated by the stars, and you can teach them about the night sky while spending time together outdoors. Lay out a blanket in the backyard or lay down on the trampoline, and talk about the various constellations and how they can be identified.

Build a Fort

Children never get tired of building blanket forts, and this activity can provide hours of entertainment. When you make it a family activity, you can put in the effort to make it a big fort for everyone to fit in. Once the fort is up, bring in some treats, and read books together or tell stories. A fort can turn a seemingly boring activity into a lot of fun for younger kids.

Go on a Scavenger Hunt

Find a downloadable scavenger hunt online, and go searching for treasures in the house, yard, neighborhood, or at the park.

Kids get excited about finding the things on the list, and they learn how to be aware of their surroundings to spot the items you are searching for.

There are many ways that you can have fun with your kids over the Memorial Day weekend, and you don’t have to spend a lot of money to have a good time!