A Guest Post from Hannah Walton aka The Cheapskate Mom

Summer is here and the pressure is on to find cool ways to entertain the kiddos that don’t hurt the wallet or the planet. Leave mainstream summer vacation ideas in the dust and you will find that frugality, fun, education and environmentalism go hand in hand. You don’t need to spend a fortune on a wasteful water park or fly half way across the country to entertain your kids – mix nature with some creativity and you’ve got a winning solution for a blissed-out summer. I’ve outlined some exciting for green summer fun on the cheap to get your wheels spinning:

1. Nature Walks Meet Modern Treasure Hunting

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure hunting game that uses GPS devices (such as smart phones) to find “treasure” boxes (aka tupperware and other sealed containers). As long as you have a GPS enabled device, you can login online, find some “caches” near you (you will be surprised how many caches are located in your neighborhood!), gather the kids and start your modern treasure hunting adventure. Once you find your treasure box, you leave a treasure behind and take a new one. Caches are everywhere – city streets, parks and hiking trails: geocaching is a terrific way to get the kids excited to be out in nature and looking at their world in an all new light.

2. Gaze At The Stars

Star gazing in the summer can be as simple as lying on a blanket in your back yard and looking up at the big night sky.  You could get a little more fancy by adding telescopes to the mix  – if you don’t have one , ask around at work and in your neighborhood – astronomy hobbyists will often be more than happy to help out and may even volunteer to attend your star gazing party and offer their expertise. Be sure to check your local paper as you may find a free star gazing night being hosted by a local astronomy club where you can check out the night sky in a park, looking through lots of different telescopes zoomed in on all sorts of outer space bling!

3. Make A Movie

If you have a smart phone or a video camera (pretty inexpensive these days), spend a day or a week making a movie. Have the kids write, direct, design, scout out locations and even film their own movie. Have a rule that you can’t spend any money on the movie to get the kids thinking outside the box (by reusing the box): repurpose trash into props and costumes and use nature as your stage. Learn about video editing together – lots of free apps and programs abound on the web – and when you are finally done – have a movie screening night in your home complete with a “red” carpet (that you repurpose, of course). You will always have your Summer of 2012 movie for your kids to keep and remember for years to come.

4. Start A Garden

You can garden if you have a huge backyard or just an old coffee canister with some dirt. Not only is gardening great for the planet – and a wonderful life-long hobby to introduce to your children – it can be great for your wallet as you can actually eat what you grow. You can use found dirt and seeds from vegetables you eat – or plant a garlic clove – you could even get fancy and start composting your food and give every kid a little area in your yard or their own window sill if you are an apartment dweller like me. Gardening is a great way to teach kids about how patience and work pays off big.

5. Have a Low Wallet & Carbon Footprint Summer Vacation

Camping is the perfect way to spend time as a family, have fun and learn about nature while having quite an adventure. Camping means going swimming, meeting other families, long hikes, camp fires and getting creative with camping cooking. Another frugal and green vacation idea is to swap homes – do you have a city place while friends live in the country? Bring up the idea of a week long or even weekend house swap and see what happens – it’s a great way to go somewhere different without paying a lot for not-so-green accommodations!

6. Construct A Backyard Obstacle Course

Get the kids out of the house and into the creativity zone : have the kids plan out an obstacle course adventure. Take old boxes, tires, ropes, coffee canisters, wood (anything goes just make sure to supervise, of course) and then let the crew construct their very own obstacle course – a fun group activity sure to give way to lifelong memories of summer fun from way back when.

The Cheapskate Mom is a mom-focused blog magazine all about surviving the recession in style with lots of eco-friendly and DIY ideas, crafts, giveaways, recipes and projects. For more DIY summer ideas, check out Games For Kids Summer Parties.

This is the time of year when you are bombarded with all kinds of local summer camp offerings. Summer time isn’t vacation time for many parents and you either have to find ways to keep kids occupied or maybe you just want to occasionally. No parent wants to hear the dreaded “Mom, I’m bored!” from their kids. I am one of those mean moms that tells my kids to get creative and use their imagination if they are bored. I don’t feel as though it is my job to entertain them. Yet, I do want to facilitate some special moments and memories during the summer and summer camps are usually out of our budget, at least for all three kids. The next best option may be a co-op.

What is a co-op, and what does it have to do with child care and/or child entertainment during the summer? A co-op can be various things, from a homeschool organization to a group of people who share similar interests. But we are talking about summer co-ops that will act as child care if you need to work or child entertainment if you just want to give your kids some fun summer experiences. This kind of co-op is basically a conglomeration (or co-operative) of parents who get together and share child care/entertainment duties. It’s very much like a do-it-yourself summer camp!

How Can You Start a Summer Co-op?

First, you’ll want to decide what the co-op is all about. Will it have a theme that changes weekly? Are you going to integrate learning, educational projects, fun activities, or a combination of these? Is there a point besides just babysitting? Other parents might be more inclined to commit if you have a general plan in place for what the co-op will look like. However, it may be off-putting if you have every detail worked out and other parents feel as though they have to follow your blueprint without any input of their own. The best approach is probably a loose outline or idea and a request for ideas and feedback.

Next, you will need to start contacting parents in your area. You can start with close friends, then move into your child’s school directory if possible. Based on a 5-day work week, you will need at least ten families who are willing to commit to once a week care (with at least two adults present at each co-op). Invite parents via email, phone, letter, or whatever works best for you. You can also create a private Facebook group for all involved parties so that you can organize better and stay up to date on planning and schedules.

What Activities Should We Offer?

There are all kinds of activities you can offer during your summer co-op! Because of the favorable weather, outdoor activities are possible. You might find it works best to have a theme for each day (Monday is Art Day, Friday is All About Animals, Wednesday is Water Fun, etc.) Here are some ideas.

* Birds – Bird-watching, crafts, and art projects are just the beginning with bird-oriented activities. You could also visit an aviary, collect feathers, make bird feeders, and go on hikes to watch birds in the wild. A field trip to a farm to look at chickens would be fun, or the kids could do a bird theme scavenger hunt.

* Art – This is a broad and almost endless subject for activities! You can paint outside (try throwing washable balls at a big sheet of paper!) and use the hose to clean off. Create a sidewalk or driveway mural with paints and chalk. You could make your own sidewalk chalk as a project. You could also plan a visit to a museum and create artwork inspired by what you observe. Use colored water to spray-paint the surface of sand in a sandbox, sculpt with clay, and create nature crafts like twig picture frames. There are so many ways you could do art with kids that you could incorporate it into all kinds of other activities.

* Water – Make sure that water play is safe; if some kids can’t swim, a trip to the pool could be disastrous. Instead, have a water day with hoses, sprinklers, wading pools, and, to help out parents, car-washing. If the cost of water is a concern, parents can pool their money to cover the cost of the water use. Alternatively there many localities that have parks with water features and splash areas you could take the kids to visit.

* Picnics – Plan an outdoor meal or cookout, and then include games like Frisbee, hopscotch, badminton, horseshoes, cornhole, and other move-about games.

* Parks – Groups of kids can have a great deal of fun at a state forest or park. You can take them all on a wildflower walk, wading in streams and creeks, or just let them play on the playground equipment and partake in the park’s resources (such as miniature golf, paddle boats, etc.).

If you need or want help with daycare this summer or you just want an affordable summer fun experience for your kids, a co-op may be just what you are looking for.

Further Reading: The Kids Summer Games Book & The Kids’ Summer Handbook

Warning spoilers below!

As I mentioned previously we took the kids to an advance screening of The Lorax in 3D this past Saturday. The kids loved it of course, as did I. I went into the experience being skeptical about the depth into which the movie would go to show environmental destruction and the greed/ignorance that motivates it and allows it. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this movie didn’t pull any punches. It went there. As a movie it now rates pretty darn high on my list of animated films to love, alongside Toy Story and Despicable Me. I laughed and I cried (twice, but they were happy tears) and this is a movie we will be be picking up on DVD for sure, as soon we can. I will also likely take my kids to the theater to see it again. The 3D version was awesome but my youngest has sensory issues and refuses to wear 3D glasses so I want him to experience it again, with less blurriness. And you HAVE to see those Truffula Trees in all their glory. Ever since I first read the Lorax book when I was a kid I always thought the trees were the stuff of magic. Who wouldn’t adore trees that looked like cotton candy???! The movie trees were everything I dreamed they would be.

But I digress…

So what’s the movie about? It is centered around adorable Ted (voiced by Zac Efron), a 12-year-old young boy who lives in Thneed-Ville, a city that, aside from the citizens, is completely artificial and plastic. He has a crush on Audrey who has a fascination with something she has never had the pleasure of seeing in real life… a real tree. You see the trees in their city are all fake and they are programmed to change color with the seasons and be all that you would ever need from a tree but they aren’t real or alive. They also do not provide clean air which is why the powers that be (the mayor and his cronies), thwart any attempt to grow trees or even speak about them because the city and his empire has been built selling purified air to the masses.

Ted sets out to find the one thing that will secure Audrey’s heart, a real tree. He gets some super secret intel from his Grandmother (Betty White) and then he leaves the city to find a tree. There in the tree stump waste land outside the city he meets the reclusive Once-ler, who shares the story of how he met the Lorax, the keeper of the trees. He was just a young entrepreneur back then and he decided he needed to use beautiful Truffula Tree tufts to make a product with universal appeal and demand. This idea eventually causes a downward spiral into mass overproduction, which then leads to the depletion of all the beautiful trees. In a cool twist it was also this event that lead to the birth of Ted’s town as he now knows it since the bad air quality left the door open for another unscrupulous businessman to create the next product in demand, clean air. It also provided a motive to make sure trees stay gone.

In a very groovy musical scene the movie shows the production of the Once-ler’s product and it shows him getting physically larger and larger and also getting greener with greed. I thought the visual was amazing. He literally steps on people below him as he gets larger and tells them to worry about themselves and not what he is doing, all the while he is destroying their shared resources. The 1% versus the 99% anyone? In a hilarious scene he throws one of his products (which looks like a sweater) on top of the Lorax and just then a photo is snapped and captioned with the words “Lorax Approved!” just as the lyrics in the song chime about deceptive advertising. Priceless!

I also loved the fact that it in direct and indirect ways talked about other environmental issues beyond the trees and air quality. The effects of deforestation on animal life is well represented and you will fall in love with all the creatures who lived there. The mayor’s cronies come up with an idea to bottle air and market it much like a beverage. They gleefully tell the mayor that all the pollution caused from manufacturing the plastic bottles will create even more demand for the product. I was really surprised to see such an indictment of plastic and plastic bottles in this film. The water quality in the city is also bad and makes children glow. Their food is not real food but rather some sort of jello-like substance and yet Ted ironically called marshmallows “junk food”. They have fake food just like we do, LOL. Also one of the chief ways the mayor and his bunch keep the public from desiring real trees, vegetation, food, etc is to make it seem dirty and unsanitary. In the uber artificial and sanitary Theed-Ville they are opposed to mess and dirt.

Anyway…  back to Ted. The Once-ler gives Ted the last Truffula Seed and Ted sets out to give it to Audrey but is converged upon by the Mayor and his thugs. Ted knows he won’t win this battle without help so he sets out to remind his town of the importance of nature so that they can join together and bring back the trees.

I will stop there and not give away any ending bits and pieces but the movie was phenomenal. I know it has come under fire from some for the way in which it has been marketed and the partnership and product tie ins that have been associated with it. I cannot deny the validity of those claims but as far as the actual movie is concerned, it is pretty darn near flawless. The movie is more upbeat than the book and the Lorax is not so grouchy and judgmental, which I liked a lot. Overall I think I prefer the movie to the book. Yes, some may think that is sacrilegious but hey, it’s how I feel. I find the book to be a bit depressing and did not find the movie to be so at all. Sure it had its sad and frustrating moments but mostly it was inspirational and encouraging. It gets a definitive A+ from me.

For adults you have the monthly Conscious Box (of which I am a huge fan) but I also recently came across a similar concept for kids, the BabbaBox. If you subscribe then you get a new box every month especially for kids with crafts and activities to keep them entertained and engaged for a few afternoons, and not glued to a TV screen. I like the concept for the obvious reasons… it encourages play, crafting, creativity, TV free play, ect. But I also like it because it gives busy moms, and moms who don’t identify as creative or crafty, an easy way to encourage these activities in their kids without too much brain power. Having such an inventive idea at your disposal during the winter months when the weather may drive kids indoors… bonus.

And the lack of parental brain power required part, it’s no small thing. When you decide to do some crafts with kids you have to plan it out, scour the Internet for ideas that are fun yet doable, buy the stuff you need, and go to a specialty stores many times to get them. Then you try to clean the house a bit so you actually have clean work surfaces. Even so, you could end up with a big fat mess at the end, with crafts requiring massive space and time for paint to dry and you may wonder why in the heck you even decided to do this in the first place. Some of us are just not overly crafty and the work it takes to provide those experiences for your kids can be daunting.

BabbaCo, the company behind the box, set us up with a sample box to test out recently. As soon as you open the box you get an inventory of what is inside. Each activity or craft comes in a separate bag with corresponding instructions so you don’t have to worry that your kids will just dive in and lose pieces that you may need for later. It is all very organized. Our box had a Thanksgiving/Gratitude theme and like all boxes it had 4 components: Create, Explore, Story Tell, Digital. The Create part gives them 3-4 activities where they can craft and/or create. Explore seeks to engage your kids with the world and nature. Story Tell is accomplished with a story or book. Digital hooks you up with interactive learning opportunities and BabbaCo approved downloads.

In our box we got 3 gratitude projects… a serving tray to paint and decorate, a trivet/hotpad to personalize and decorate, and a DIY thank you cards. I liked that all 3 of the crafts could be used as gifts. I thought that was really timely for the season. It also came with an empty journal and a disposable camera so that a child can take pictures of all the things they are grateful for and then after they are processed, put them inside the journal. The storytelling part came into play with a copy of the book Giving Thanks. It was an excellent book that fit the theme but also incorporated a great message about wildlife and nature. It was our fave part about the box actually and got me wondering if there is a good book of the month subscription opportunity out there.

The last part was digital. You can either scan a QR code found inside the box or visit the link they give to access the corresponding digital content. There you find video and pdf files with step by step instructions for each activity (if you need it). It also links to iPad/iPhone apps. In this case it was a Dora Thanksgiving online activity (free) and a decorating cookies app. If you have one of these devices then you get the app free with a code from the box. I have an Android phone so if I wanted the app I would have had to pay. I am one of those uncool mommies who does not let my kids play with my phone and they will not get a smartphone of their own OR a tablet until they are old enough to pay for them I suspect. So, we didn’t do the app part.

The best part of the box IMO is that it also has a little gift for mom in it. Woot! This is a very clever idea! My gift was a stainless steel Tea Infuser and two bags of premium, caffeine free herbal tea. I am not a tea drinker so I will be re-gifting it but it is the thought that counts.

In the end we had fun with the box and I know my youngest would love to keep getting them. He is almost 6 and the suggested age range is 3-6. The camera/journal was a bit beyond him but I also suspect that he is on the autism spectrum like his older brother, so that could be a factor. I really like the idea and the presentation but I also think that the box could use some greening. The plastic bags that house each activity have to go, in favor of paper ones or comparable. The crafts themselves could also use some help in this regard but I do realize this product is designed to cater to eco conscious families.

If you are interested in ordering  you can use code: ZB2367U for 20% off. Does this box look like something your kids would enjoy?

I have mentioned dozens of times how crazy I am about the game Wildcraft. It is a game for the whole family that teaches about herbs and natural healing. Read my complete review here. It is just a perfect way to integrate fun with learning and my whole family just loves it. One obstacle for many though, is price. It is something I have had to come to grips with myself since the cheapo games from big toy companies can be had for $10. Quality games though can cost 5 to 10 times that, though Wildcraft does not actually. It was created by a Dad who just wanted his kids to play something more valuable than Candyland and it is sold direct from his family to others. There is no big toy manufacturer behind it.

The regular price ($39) is actually very reasonable but I still keep my eye out for the annual sale that comes around the holidays and I just recieved word of it this morning. From now until Friday at midnight you can Wildcraft for only $19 AND you get a host of cool bonuses including:

*  The “Herbs for Children During Cold & Flu Season” video.

*  A revised eBook by Rosalee de la Foret
 called “Herbal Gifts.” Make your own gifts!

*  A customizable herbal children’s book. You get  the Word file, you fill in the blanks, print it, and
 give it as a gift to the little ones in your life!

*  Dandelion Activity eBook

*  Herbal Medicine Chest Chart (located in game)

*  Herbal Roots Zine Kids Activity Magazine

This is a perfect Christmas gift. Enjoy!