Budget-Friendly Family Activities

ByMeagan
168 Comments

I absolutely LOVE spending time with my family. Each week, we try and set aside at least one night where we are together just as a family – no friends, no electronics, etc. During family night, we enjoy exploring, laughing, going on outings, eating yummy food, etc. Having family night once a week brings my family closer together and strengthens the bonds that we all share with one another. Being a family on a budget, we’ve found that you can still go on fun family outings without having to spend a lot of money. Enjoy a night with the family by celebrating with one of these budget-friendly family activities ideas.

I received a Roku player and compensation in exchange for this post. All opinions are my own. 

family activities

Budget-Friendly Family Activities

Book Night: Go to your local bookstore or library and enjoy reading books together. Have everyone in the family choose their favorite picture books and take turns reading them aloud.

family activities

Feed the Ducks: Take an old bag of bread/rolls and head to your favorite duck pond.

Fly a Kite: Go to the dollar store and buy a kite for everyone in the family. Head on over to the park and enjoy flying your kites high in the sky.

Visit the Pet Store: Take your family to your local pet store or animal shelter and enjoy an evening petting and learning about different kinds of animals.

family activities

Homemade Drive-in movie:  Using old boxes, markers, duct tape, etc, have fun creating “cars.” Set up a movie outside and drive these cars to a homemade “drive in movie.”

Family Bike Ride: Take a relaxing bike ride to the park or around the neighborhood as a family. If your little one is too small to ride a bike, enjoy a nice family walk with the stroller. The important thing is spending quality time together.

family activity

What’s even more fun than having a family fun night? Taking pictures and videos of these fun outings to make lasting memories. Now with RealPlayer Cloud, you can take, upload and store all of your videos in one safe location. Easily accessible with the RealPlayer Cloud App, you can view your videos from your mobile device, laptop, Roku player, etc while freeing up storage on your phone. Whether you choose to share these videos or watch them as a family, it’s nice knowing all of your videos are in one safe location. Best of all, you can download RealPlayer Cloud for free! Sounds like a win-win to me.

family activities

Last weekend my family went on a fun family outing to the lake. While at the lake, we enjoyed eating yummy food, playing in the water, building sand castles, etc. It was fun to be able to capture these precious family moments on our RealPlayer Cloud. After we arrived home, we were able to watch our fun family videos on our TV by logging onto our RealPlayer Cloud account on our Roku 2; this in turn provided us with another fun family activity!

family activities

Now it’s your turn to have a family fun outing and capture the events on your RealPlayer Cloud!

What’s are your favorite family activities?


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168 Comments

  9. My family of 6 like to sit out by a fire and roast hot dogs and make smores.We sit around and just tell jokes or share how are week has been.

  13. In the summers we usually do 1 night a week make burgers on the grill and popcorn in the micro and have a movie night either on the tv or rent a movie thru our cable company as they only charge $2.99 for them.

  16. We have a daughter and she love sto dance and sing. We have “dance party night” It’s a blast

  20. We have a “make your own pizza” night where the kids decorate their own pizza. Then we watch a movie on TV.

  24. board games and home maid cookies! as long as its not monopoly because my husband likes to win and its not fun after a while!

  25. My favorite inexpensive family nights are when my husband grills up some “Daddy Burgers” and we all watch a favorite DVD together.

  26. Going to the park is always awesome, the lake the same. It’s getting chilly now so visiting the pumpkin patches that are local is great. It’s cost effective and they always have fun things going on for the kids.

  29. We love to make tacos as a family dinner and then my older children like to play Monopoly or Sorry.

  31. we usually make nachos or get a take n bake pizza or make pizzas using a pizza kit from the local store and watch movies on Netflix or Hulu or even get a DVD from Redbox.

  36. Pizza, board games and movies at home are a fun and inexpensive way to pass the evening.

  39. My favorite inexpensive family night is making an easy dinner or ordering pizza. We can watch movies via Amazon Prime, Netflix, or $1 movies from RedBox. We could also bake cookies and make popcorn for movie snacks.

  40. My favorite is when we have an ice cream sundae bar. We get vanilla ice cream and some toppings and have fun for cheap.

  42. My favorite family nights are when my grandsons take turns listening to the music they like. They all dance together is our tiny house. Love them 🙂

  46. We like to get a take and bake pizza and watch a movie we TiVo’d during the week. Sometimes we will make a dessert together. Thanks for the opportunity to win!

  52. Our favorite inexpensive night idea is to go to the local high school football or softball game.

  62. Since my son is twenty-one, one of my favorite family night activity is when we all watch football together. I’ll make dinner, usually Chili in the slow cooker and we spend the whole Sunday together. We’ve been doing this for years! 🙂

  64. One of our favorite ways to have a frugal family night is to make pizza as a family and rent a couple of movies to watch while eating popcorn and drinking Coke floats.

    jweezie43[at]gmail[dot]com

  74. I’ve heard such great things about Roku! We do a lot of movie and homemade pizza nights, game nights and now tv catch up nights.

  76. Our favorite inexpensive family night is family game night. We take turns pickng the games we play. We have so much fun.

  80. We like to have family movie nights and start with baking cookies or making a new dessert we have never made before!

  81. We collect books about other countries, and have international nights. We choose a country, and make some of their foods, try some of their traditions, dress etc. Printable make it easy to have some foreign fun.

  83. We love playing board games, ordering pizza and then movies afterwards. Way relaxing fun!

  86. we normally order a pizza and watch classic movies and old dvds. sometimes play board games.

  91. Old fashioned board games work for me but it may be a struggle with some tech minded kids. A walk in a park you’ve never visited before is good.

  92. We love to have a picnic in the park, and they are sometimes followed up with an outdoor movie on the side of the barn there!

  93. The Roku and real player could would be great. We do like family movie night at home as inexpensive entertainment. I keep an eye out for free community events as well.

  94. We love to rent movies with free movie codes and eat foods that go with the theme of the movie!

  95. We got a couple of cheap guitars and are trying to learn to play. Sometime we learn something, sometimes somebody shows what they learned that week. It’s pretty fun!

  96. Having a family movie night with take-out for dinner. We take turns picking the movie and choosing where to order dinner.

  99. We like to lay blankets in the living room get out popcorn cookies and pizza and pig out watching movoes on Netflix and Hulu

  100. Some of my fondest memories of family night with my young children were the times we brought a blanket out on the living room floor, had pizza and snacks (our “picnic dinner”), brought bunches of pillows to cuddle on and just enjoyed the night together.

    Bittersweet memories.

  102. We will spend an evening watching a movie either from Blu-Ray or Netflix and have real popcorn from out movie theater style popcorn popper. Much cheaper than going to the movies and Our TV is big enough and my surround sound system is powerful enough to be just about like being at the theater anyway.

  110. As a family, we love going out and enjoying events together like flea markets or craft fairs! We also enjoy going out as a family and getting ice cream at a local ice cream place every now and again 🙂

    Thank you for this great opportunity!

  127. My favorite inexpensive family night is either watching movies or games (usually cards) with snacks (popcorn, pretzels, etc.).

  129. My favorite inexpensive family night idea is craft night or movie night. We rent a movie and I make popcorn or we have some kind of treat.

  131. I’m old school.. jigsaw puzzles, board games, card games or working on a hobby such as stamp collecting ( from which you can learn countries, etc ).

  132. My favorite is to rent a movie from RedBox, or Netflix and have cook some yummy snacks to enjoy while we watch.

  133. Definitely game night. All of us love to play board and card games and we make a nice snack and play games for the evening.

  135. Movie night, where we turn the kids onto the adults favorite childhood movies. Homemade pizza & sundaes. If I won, I would hope that Realplayer Cloud Gold works better than the version that is gnawing on my lappy right now.

  137. One of our favorite inexpensive family night activities is game night. My daughter is huge on charades! We also like to play board games like checkers, Uno, Monopoly.A bowl of popcorn and games you can’t go wrong.

  147. The link in the first entry option is broken when you try to click through, but if you copy & paste the URL, you can go to the correct page.

    How do you notify winners? Do we have to check back, or so you send an email?

  149. This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.” when I clicked the link.

  156. “This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.” That’s what I got when I clicked the link.

  162. Looks like a blow dryer I need..mine is so outdated, I have two left hands when it comes to blow drying and styling at the same time…I need to practice for sure

  163. Great tips on how to blow dry hair like a Professional. You sure did get your hair to look terrific. I am not always this good in blow drying my hair. I always use a volumizer because my hair is fine, and a good hair dryer really works better!

  165. I haven’t heard of RealPlayer Cloud before, but it really sounds wonderful and something that would really be great for our family videos.

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