How to keep kids busy when school is off? Here are some suggestions for fun outdoor  activities that will cost you very little and my children love to play. You can alternate these on different days. Many of you have a toddler who still stays home and a preschooler or older one and you are in charge of both or more all day. What to do next after your children have already done TV time, played at the nearby park, read stories with you, hopefully taken a nap but it's 3:00 pm and there are probably 3-4 hours left till bedtime.

Create a pretend North Pole in your back yard or porch by dumping a bunch of ice from your refrigerator, or buy couple of ice bags, they are very cheap. You will need some plastic toys - penguins, polar bears, fish, seals . This can be very educational - Welcome to the North Pole, lets see who lives there? Be creative, have the penguins slide on the ice and dive in the ocean (a big Tupperware bowl) and catch fish. It's summer, the ice is going to eventually melt, there will be a big puddle in which your kids will end up splashing in.

Go on a Cherry hunt. Who says that there can be only Easter Egg hunt. Get out your Easter eggs and fill them up with cherries. If you don't keep your plastic eggs, buy some little plastic tupperware containers, which you can use later in the kitchen. Hide them around your backyard just like the Easter eggs and have your children find them. You can substitute cherries with strawberries. Just make sure all cherry eggs are accounted for at the end.

Have a Splash Day by running your sprinklers system in the middle of the day. All children love to run through sprinklers, this will last for a while so you can sit and enjoy a cold lemonade.

Have a Special Treasure Hunt. Create a simple map that your children can follow, leave different clues around your yard (paper arrows and signs), buy several cheap, little, new toys from the dollar store, wrap them in sparkling paper (creates more treasure mood), hide or berry them around in your back or front yard. You can play this game indoor too on a rainy day.

Have a Watercolor painting. You will need a box of different colors chalk broken into small pieces. Put the chalk pieces on the concrete in front of your house or on the stone floor on your porch, pour a little water over each pieces. Give your children painting brush and have them mix the paint, the chalk is going to dissolve in the water and create a bright color. You can even allow them to paint some on the wall of the house, don't worry at the end you can just hose it down. Your children will have fun mixing the chalk with water.

Have a Dinner-Picnic Outside. We are talking about a real dinner/picnic in your backyard or in the nearby park. You need a kids picnic basket, involve your kids in preparing the meal, choose the food and some fun plastic plates and napkins, bring board games or balls to play after the meal. Children get excited to do something different, eating dinner on the table everyday can be boring, but picnic outside sounds like fun, especially if they are involved in the preparation.

Another thing I do is have a picnic for all our stuffed animals, we spread a big blanket on the porch and bring all toys out or pull them out in a wagon. We pack different foods for the animals (for example carrots for bunnies or nuts for the squirrel). You can pack a little surprise for your kids like a packet of Annies's Organic Bunny Fruit Snacks, or some chocolate milk.

To buy kids picnic basket from here.