CHEAP older: picnic, walk up a close lookout hill - walk up to tire them out, take them on a garage sale crawl and get everyone, incuding you, to buy the best present they can find for $2, for each person in the family, then they wrap them all with newspaper, then you all put them all in a box. then just give everyone one each, until you've given out all the presents, then you open them, (you'll be amazed how many people love the other persons present), then, everyone gets to haggle and swap presents. Takes ages and is an excellent anti commercialisation of Christmas present giving, and you get amazing value at garage sales. Museums, zoos, dogwalking and washing, making homemade dog biscuits, (recipe on the Net), they go through their wardrobes and pull out anything they want to donate to a charity or sell in a garage sale, organise a combined garage/yard sale for friends or street, get them to do a play, get them to start a vegetable garden or weed it. Write them treasure hunt clues in garden or local park - where safe, for movie tickets the next day. If you are laid back, let them paint a wall in their bedroom or paint the cubby house or dog kennel or if too old for cubby convert it for hens or get them to learn morse with special permission to spell out rude words - always excites them. Borrow books from library. more expensive: pottery for school hols, acting classes for school hols. If animal mad get 6, 8, 10 kids together, split costs and hire a dog BEHAVIOUR expert to come and teach them how dogs think and behave, why they bite and the signs (a dog trainer is NOT necessarily a behaviour expert). If they are mad on a sport, find a young amateur on the brink of going professional, (ring the club and ask them to recommend someone), get other parents to put in and send their kids and get them a mornings coaching and auographs - reasonable if split between 3 or 4 parents. See if there is a local group who weed and look after old or disabled people's gardens would let them go along - you don't give ages or gender. Volunteer them at a farm animal rescue charity or a donkey sanctuary. bead jewellery making, can you teach them to make paper? build a compost box, see if you can borrow dvds from friends or library teach them guitar, Pay them to take all the books in your house out of bookcases dust, wipe down and replace. Bake a cake or biscuits, see if there's a reenactment going on for those history buffs of all periods. Any dinasour museums, military museums... Tell them to research the story of how they used pigeons in WW2 on the internet (one was called G I JOE) it really is full of amazing stories and they may go back and use it in a school project. Get them a large jar and make a time capsule. Get them to interview grandpareents. Who is the kindest person you ever met? how did you meet grandpa/ma? What did you like most about them? what was your saddest /happiest day who was the kindest person you ever met? Did anyone in the family go to war and all info they can remember... All the questions you mean to ask and write down and forget to... and then they can interview you, etc It all depends on what age and what interests your children have...