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Friday, September 3, 2010

The Boredom box

Because I need to SLOW DOWN and enjoy my children and because my boys are constantly following me around the house complaining that they are SO bored… I came up with the “Summer Boredom Box”

I just used an old box I had around the house and found some scrapbook paper. Cut it to size and mod podged the paper on and there you go! Honestly, it doesn't matter what the outside look like, it's more about what's inside. You could use a glass jar, a big mug or whatever your creative minds come up with.
Now here comes the fun part, coming up with activities to do. I searched the internet, pulled all the activities I could find for the kids to do and put them in a word document. I erased the ones that didn’t work for us and added a few of my own, printed it out and cut it up into small pieces...and then stuck them in the box.



I made big deal of it and told the boys that anytime they were bored they could ask for the boredom box and pick an activity. I love it because it’s exciting for them, it’s something new which we all know is a good thing and it forces me to sit down and spend some quality time with them. There are a few activities that they have picked that have had to be put on the fridge and done later (like trip to a free museum in town), but in those instances they still get to pick another. The rules are that we have to do what we pick, no putting it back and picking until we get the best one, so it’s an adventure every time.

Here’s a list of a few of our activities:
Go for a bike ride
Make homemade ice cream or visit an ice cream parlor
Bake a double batch of cookies and deliver one to another family
Have a picnic
Hike or climb trees
Make popcorn or maybe even caramel corn
Blow bubbles
Go swimming
Plan a scavenger hunt for outside. Or plan one for in the house using every letter of the alphabet.
Draw a map of your block or of your town, or trace a map of your country and fill in the states or cities or other feature
Make playdoh
Read a good book aloud
Look through photo albums or view family movies, or videos
Make a collage from magazine words and pictures
Draw pictures with chalk on the sidewalk
Go fishing
Plan a family game night
Work on a jigsaw puzzle
Go roller skating
Paint a picture
Have a candy treasure hunt
Make a paper airplane and fly it
Make an obstacle course in your back yard
Visit a tourist spot near your home
Make a bird feeder
Walk around your block and pick up all the litter you can find.
Go to the zoo
Go bowling
Make your own homemade pizza
Listen to your favorite music and dance around
Go without TV for a day
Make a collage using seeds, rice, cereal, old buttons and sewing scraps
Run around the house outside 3 times
Go camping–or stay home and camp out in your own dining room.
Build with LEGOS
Make puppets out of lunch bags, old socks, felt, wooden clothespins. Put on a puppet show
Have a bonfire outdoors or in your fireplace and roast hot dogs and marshmallows
Write a letter to your grandma or grandpa
Pick wild flowers and press some of them to save
Make dinner for your family
Sketch a picture of your house from the outside
Play educational computer games
Make a piece of art out of objects you have around the house
Color a picture or write a letter to send to grandparents
Make a list together of all the things in your house that use electricity. You might do this when you lose power sometime.
Plant something
Enjoy a shopping trip for something little, but fun---a jar of bubbles, stickers, paper dolls, a matchbox car
Play store, library or school
Play hide-and-seek (inside or outside)
Help wash the car
Draw a family tree on paper and complete it as a family. Add old photographs if available
Go jogging or take a walk together
Give each person a large piece of paper and take turns tracing the outlines of their bodies on it. Color in the outlines to look like you or use sidewalk chalk
Go to the library
Gather a variety of leaves
Fly a kite
Make a summer snack
If it's warm outside, turn on the water sprinkler and run through it
Water the yard, houseplants or flowers
Play with sand toys and trucks in a sandbox
Play a card game
Go to a ball game or play one---football, kickball, softball, baseball, basketball, soccer
Finger paint with chocolate pudding
Make a milkshake or a smoothie
Take a trip to an amusement park, a museum or a planetarium
Clean out your closet.
Make a yummy salad and eat it
Build a fort
String beads to make a necklace
Write and illustrate a short story
Play with water guns