I found myself in between an errand and an appointment today with time to kill. There was a Target store right next to the eye clinic my husband needed to go to, and we had about thirty minutes before it opened. He grabbed a table at the snack area to study, and I decided to cruise the aisles for penny pinching inspiration. What I found were six different items for children to have fun with this summer. All were plastic and packaging free, and all were between thirty-nine cents and five dollars.

Let's get real. Whether it's on the home front or in the classroom, keeping children entertained is rather hard to do without excess plastic and packaging. It takes a fair bit of forethought and the conscious selection of activities and toys. While not all art and entertainment supplies can be purchased without plastic, several can. Here are the ones I found today.

Postcards.

In the dollar bins at the front of the store, were stacks of tear-out postcard booklets. They were all done in bold colors with kid-friendly graphics of animals, footballs and more. They were longer in length with generously spaced address lines on the back for small handed little people with large penmanship. All booklets contained eight postcards. That's less than fifteen cents a piece plus postage for a fun educational activity during summer break. If you really want to cheap it out, however, children can create and design their own with index cards. Here's a link to an article with some directions.

Puzzle books.

Word puzzles are fun for kids of all ages. For a buck a pop plus a pencil, children can enjoy days of entertainment.

Poster board.

Different colors were different prices, but all were under a buck. The least expensive was the white poster board at thirty-nine cents. Let the kids have fun with art materials they already have kicking around the house. They can celebrate a book from that week's trip to the library or create a colorful advertising poster for that night's family puppet show.

Sketch diary.

I liked these because they were more notebook in nature as opposed to the traditional flip pad design. Sketch paper with a metal spiral binding and paperboard covers is basically what we're talking about here. They were under five dollars in price, with enough paper to provide several week's worth of nature and still life sketches over the summer.

Floor pad.

Larger pieces of paper in a tear off pad suitable for floor work. Fit some into beverage boxes for an affordable marble painting activity, or use wide crayons to create art work suitable for that much white space.

Tear-off construction paper pad.

Paper bag puppets, folded paper art projects, or torn paper mosaics on the poster board mentioned above would all be ways to use this particular art supply item effectively.

These were my top picks for package-free entertainment for the kids. We have one or two additional articles here on Wise Bread as well. For other Target shopping tips, check out this piece by Linsey. Have you noticed any other affordable product kids might enjoy?