厌倦了花几百美元买孩子们不玩的玩具？厌倦了最新的玩具吸引你的孩子的注意力，使它成为你认为冒犯（BrATZ）或不可能获得的东西（霹雳舞Elmo）？

不要害怕。这些经典的玩具和活动可以用你家里可能已经有的东西来**。另外，他们会让你的孩子们玩上几个小时，当他们玩完后，你可以扔掉他们，而不会因为你花了你的圣诞奖金而感到难过。此外，研究表明，孩子对你们两人**的玩具的记忆要比在商店买的玩具长得多。

以下是花费1美元或更少的十大娱乐方式：

1. Large cardboard boxes - Perfect for making houses and **all castles. A large cardboard box can entertain an imaginative child for hours. Make sure you are nearby to take pictures and plenty of door knocking. Hint: look for an appliance store in your area. They often have many of the large boxes they are willing to give you as opposed to putting in the trash.
2. Rubber band and pencil crazy bot - A simple toy you probably remember from elementary school. Take two unsharpened pencils and wrap a rubber band around the center. Twist the pencils lengthwise against each other (as you would wind a propeller on a toy plane). Set down flat on a table and let the jumping begin. Teach your child not to twist the rubber band too tightly or it will break. Make sure to have plenty of extra rubber bands handy just in case.
3. Make a paper popper - What do kids like more than birthday cake? Noise of course. Here's a little noisemaker you remember from grade school. To make:
   1. Fold a sheet of copier paper lengthwise down the middle - open the sheet back up and lay flat
   2. Fold all four corners of the paper inward toward the center crease
   3. Fold the sheet of paper in half the other way keeping all four corners folded inward - you will end up what looks vaguely like a stealth aircraft
   4. With the point facing away from you, grab the right side and fold it upward so the bottom is parallel with the crease
   5. Do the same with the left side
   6. Unfold so you are back to the stealth fighter
   7. Using the crease as a reference, tuck the upper right hand corner into the popper.
   8. Repeat with the other side. It will look like a diamond.
   9. Lastly, Fold it one more time so it looks like a triangle.
   10. Hold from the bottom and as if you were pitching a baseball, flip the popper rapidly through the air. The inward folded corner will "POP" out making a fun and satisfying sound.
4. Home Depot Kids Workshop - The huge hardware conglomerate is a great refuge for Dads everywhere, but now they offer kids workshops one Saturday per month (check your local Home Depot for time and location). At the workshop kids learn how to build birdhouses, bat houses, stock car racers, airplanes, wooden flowerpot holders and more. It's a great Saturday morning activity where your kids can learn the skills necessary to fix your roof when you get too old to climb up there.
5. Plant something - A simple way to teach young children how to take care of a living organi** is to plant something. You can use containers made of old plastic cups with holes in the bottom or you can plant outdoors depending on the season. Digging in dirt is great fun for a child. They are also thrilled when the little baby plant awakens from the soil. Suddenly, they have something fragile to take care of. Hint: I find that planting green beans provides the quickest results. Bean plants begin to poke their heads through the soil in just a few short days.
6. Water sprinkler - While watering the lawn, water your kids too. On a hot summer day, your grass needs 30 minutes of water. Send your kid out in a bathing suit and you'll kill two birds with one stone.
7. Bubbles bubbles everywhere - Kids and *****s alike love to blow bubbles. Mix up your own batch by pouring a teaspoon or so of dish soap into a cup and adding approximately 3 teaspo*** of water. Stir and then test. You can make a free bubble wand by unbending a large paperclip and folding it back into a triangle with a **all handle. You may need to add a little more soap or water to get the perfect bubble. Hint: pour the bubble solution into a **all plate so it's easier to get the bubble film onto the bubble wand.
8. Catch Fireflies - As a kid, I remember fond days of catching fireflies and putting them into a mayo jar with holes punched in the lid. Your kids will love it too. If you don't have wooded areas in your yard, you can find a park. The fireflies should begin to light the sky around dusk. Teach your kids how to gently catch them by letting them land in their hand. You can collect them into a jar, but please be sure to let them go at the end of the evening so they don't die. (This teaches resp***ibility and respecting nature.)
9. Paper airplanes - Up in the air with the greatest of ease. Teaching your child how to make and fly a paper airplane is one of the childhood rights of passage. It can foster a love of origami as well as a Lifehacker mindset of building your own toys. Simple airplane instructi*** (see pictures):

   

   1. Fold a piece of copier paper in half lengthwise
   2. With the crease closest to you, fold the top right corner down so that it lines up with the bottom crease.
   3. Do the same thing on the other side.
   4. Grab the top corner on one side and bend it downward so the crease on top of the paper is lined up with the crease at the bottom.
   5. Turn the plane over and fold the other side the same way.
   6. Fold it in the same manner one more time, by taking the top crease and lining it up with the bottom crease and folding.
   7. Lather rinse, repeat on the other side.
   8. Then fold the last two creases outward perpendicular to the bottom of the plane.
   9. Fly away!
10. Tin can and string telephone - You don't necessarily need tin cans for this project. Two plastic or styrofoam cups and some twine will do.
    1. Using a tack or the end of a pin, punch a hole into the center of the bottom of each cup.
    2. Cut a piece of light string 25 feet or longer.
    3. Feed one end of the string through the hole of one of the cups
    4. Tie a large knot on the string so it doesn't fall back through the hole.
    5. Feed the other end of the string through the other cup and tie a knot like you did for the first cup.
    6. Now give the cup to your child and walk away from each other until the string is tight.
    7. Now you can whisper back and forth into your child's new telephone.
    This project gets your child's physics education off to a great start by teaching vibration and harmonics. Hint: Try the phone under doors and around corners of your house. If you keep the string taut it will still work.

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布拉德·艾萨克是首席软件程序员和博客作者。每天读他的博客，你就能实现他的目标！