If your family is anything like mine their energy level seems to rise in conjunction with the amount of daylight. So, now that the nights are shorter and the days longer it seems there is energy to spare.
Unfortunately our disposable income did not rise with the thermometer so my new challenge is finding activities for our family that take advantage of the spring weather but are easy on the wallet. I thought I would share with you the top three spring activities on my list.
Parks, parks and more parks
From national parks to state parks to local parks the options are endless. Depending on what you are looking to do you can create day trips, overnight trips or just a quick afternoon romp. With national and state parks I have found I can usually work some history into the day, with local parks it is all about play. The great thing about heading off to a park is you can accommodate many different age ranges and activity levels. While the kids are playing on the structures I can catch up on some “trashy” magazine reading while my husband scans the paper, or we can all get involved in a gamily game of horse shoes.
Nature (or architecture) Walks
Living in a city a great spring activity is neighborhood walks. Saturday or Sunday mornings we pack the kids into their strollers and head out for “architecture” walks. Sometimes we keep it local in our own neighborhood and other times we venture off to new neighborhoods. I have even bought walking guide books for our home town and we follow the tours the books provided learning about certain buildings or the history behind a neighborhood. If you live outside the city nature walks in the morning or early evening are great. You can look for native plants and flowers or indigenous birds.
Museums
Museums are a great and inexpensive resource for families. Most museums have one day a week where admission is free, as well as programs and activities on different days. With the nice weather setting in many museums offer evening music programs on the roof deck or in their gardens, we recently went to a museum in the late afternoon around 4, spent about an hour wandering through and then listened to a jazz concert in the garden from 5:30-7 while the kids played.
This spring my mantra is “think out of the box”, what are your spring activity plans?
