Kids love summertime and the freedom it brings. Moms, not so much. Finding ways to entertain the children all day can be taxing on mom and on the budget. But there are some ways to take the strain off both.

A number of restaurants offer free kids meals on certain nights of the week.  In our area, just about every night is covered by at least one restaurant.  Sixty-nine cent cheeseburger Wednesday at McDonald’s is a popular lunch stop. Even though the savings don’t amount to all that much (I think cheeseburgers are ninety-five cents every other day), every Wednesday huge numbers of parents with young children flock to the one local McDonald’s that still has a playland.

Many movie theaters have started showing FREE movies on weekday mornings.  Our Cobb theater has two free kids movies each week, showing at 10AM on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  If you can convince your children that they do not need twelve bucks worth of snacks to watch a movie, then free morning movies are a great way to get out of the house without breaking the bank.

Children’s museums are another good activity for summertime.  Many will offer an annual family pass, which is a huge bargain compared to paying single day admission at most other venues.  For $60, our family has unlimited access to the children’s museum, which is good for entertaining once a week all summer without getting dull.

There are always free events being hosted here and there in any given city.  Books-a-Million is currently offering free kids activities on Saturday mornings all summer.  While they haven’t been spectacular, you can’t beat the price and the kids sure seem to have fun.

While these events will help to keep the kids entertained without breaking the bank, mom is sure to be extra weary throughout the summer.  Dad needs to step in and have some extra ‘date nights’ with the kids during the evenings, just to give mom a break.  As the saying goes, “If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”   It’s a grammatical nightmare, but it’s true.

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Recently, my husband was in the Dover area with two of our four children.  With a day of rain forecast for Saturday, he was looking for something to amuse our seven and eleven year olds.  Luckily for him, he found the Biggs Museum of American Art.

To read his full review and learn why this is a great place to go with kids, visit our sister site, Good Life Review.

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During our summer vacation to Chatham, Massachusetts, we had one day with rainy weather.  We felt very fortunate to have only one day of rain, as there were 6 children and 4 adults staying in our rental house.  We decided that an afternoon visit to the Zooquarium would work for all of the kids in our group, ranging in age from 1 to 12.

We started outdoors with a live animal show in which the animal to be shown was a surprise.  The kids were excited to see a baby alligator. The presenter did an excellent job, especially considering the thunderstorm that arrived a fourth of the way through her presentation.  We moved to a covered area, where she continued her talk and allowed any interested people to touch the alligator.

From the presentation we walked to view some caged animals, including ravens and a bobcat.  There was a small exploration area that was in a sheltered area outside.  We toured this quickly and continued to the petting zoo.  There was a modest assortment of animals, which could be viewed.  We saw llamas, chickens, donkeys, and tortoises, among other animals.  Some of these animals could be petted or fed.  All were housed in natural environments.

From there, we headed indoors to the aquarium part of the museum.  There were tanks of fish, frogs, and turtles.  There also was a touch tank that had horseshoe crabs, urchins, and other sea creatures.

The Zooquarium was a decent attraction to visit.  The good note is that the Zooquarium did amuse all of our children.  The disappointing part was that even though it was both a zoo and an aquarium, it did not amuse our group for long.  We spent a little more than an hour at the Zooquarium, and we had seen and done everything.  Perhaps, if we had had a group of children under the age of 6 it would have been more fun, but for our group it was a quick visit.

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