Charades is an oldie, but goodie, and fun for a wide range of ages. Have everyone come up with a range of ideas for others to act out, and write them down on individual scraps of paper, then put them in a container.

Separate into teams, and have one person pull out an idea. The person who drew out the name needs to act out whatever is written on the paper without using words, for their teammates to guess. Give a 2-3 minute time limit for this to be done.

You can keep score based on how quickly each item is correctly guessed, or by the most right guesses made by a team.

If young kids are playing, you’ll need to make sure that the ideas are something the kids will understand. You could even have someone from the other team tell a child who is too young to read what their clue is in a separate room, and hope they don’t shout it out right away. All part of the challenge.

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All you need to go birdwatching is a pair of binoculars, although a field guide to help you identify the various species can be nice too. Head into your backyard, the park or a nature trail and start looking around.

It can be pretty surprising to see the variety of birds you can find in your local area. Kids love seeing birds, especially when you spot a really brightly colored one that you don’t see every day.

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Most kids love watching any sort of construction going on. It could be a house, a street, a high rise, anything. It’s a fascinating process.

If you know of some going on in your area, with a good, safe place to watch for a time, it can be a fun thing to do with the kids. You can talk about what goes into making a building and the different tools and equipment they’re using.

It’s also a good activity to do over time if it’s close enough. Go by once a week or so and see the changes. So long as there’s decent progress it can be pretty impressive.

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I don’t often post time sensitive things for Free Fun Fridays, but I just can’t resist posting that April 17-25, 2010 is National Park Week, and entry to all National Parks is free during that time. It sounds like a lot of fun for the family.

Activities of course vary by park, but there are things you can volunteer for and activities for the kids. Just take a look at the site and see if you’d like to head out to a National Park in your area.

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This is a fun way to mess around with the paints your kids already have. Kids like blowing bubbles, after all. You’ll need:

Bubble solution
Tempura paint
Straw
Shallow bowl
Paper
Newspaper or other protective covering for work area

Put the bowl on your covered work area. Pour in the bubble solution and add enough of one color of tempura paint to get to the color you want.

If you can trust the kids to not inhale this mixture, let them blow bubbles until they’re just over the rim of the bowl. If you think they’ll try to drink it or inhale by mistake, blow the bubbles yourself.

Have a child gently place the paper over the top of the bowl. The bubbles will pop and leave color on the paper.

You can repeat this on the same piece of paper with other colors. Just be sure the paper doesn’t get too soggy.

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Most areas have some sort of historic areas that you can take your family to for free. It may be a memorial, an Old Town section, old homes, etc.

Take advantage of these and teach your kids a bit about the history of the area they live in. It’s a bit more immediate than what they learn most of the time in school, and that makes it more interesting. And have fun doing it!

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Playing hangman can be a really great family activity, especially as kids start learning to spell. You can take turns deciding who picks the words and who guesses the letters. Both are good for young spellers.

According to Wikipedia, those who don’t like the concept of drawing a hanging man sometimes switch to drawing apples on a tree, then erasing them as guesses are missed.

There are online versions of hangman as well, but I really prefer the interactive side of playing it in person.

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Do you have a box of dominoes? Pulled it out lately? It might be time to build a dominoes course and let one of the kids knock it over.

Building a course without knocking it down is pretty challenging itself. Kids love to help build them, but of course aren’t always careful enough. Be ready to just laugh off the frustration if things fall down at the wrong time.

Make sure you aren’t building it someplace where someone is going to knock a domino over just accidentally, and that the surface is pretty stable. Accidents happen but you probably want to minimize the frustration when you’re trying to just have fun.

Get creative in your building process.  You can make the dominoes course go over steps, drop from a height onto a lower track, and of course go all over the place.

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Building a card tower is challenging, but it can also be a good way for kids to work with their fine motor skills and just plain have fun. One deck of cards is plenty for most purposes, but if you really get into it all you need is more decks!

Building a card tower takes a lot of patience, especially if a family pet or sibling comes and accidentally knocks the whole thing down just as you’re getting things going or are almost done. You want to pick the place you start working very carefully.

If you’ve never built a card tower, there are plenty of tips online. Just do a search and you’ll soon have a pretty good idea for how to get started.

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While cooking isn’t strictly a free activity, odds are it’s money you would have spent otherwise, so this one at least doesn’t cost anything extra.

Pick out a new recipe that is age appropriate for you to make with your children. You can get a kids’ cookbook from the library if you want, or buy one if this is something you’ll do regularly enough. And of course there are plenty of kid friendly recipes to make online.

Make it fun or make it part of  a regular meal, whatever you want.

Cooking is a great way to teach kids about fractions and other bits of math, in a way that isn’t so intimidating. It can also teach them about responsibility, especially if your child is old enough to start cooking on the stove with you.

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