Boredom Busting Activities

By Whitney Hollingshead

Integrated Learning Strategies (ILS) is a learning and academic center. As a reminder, ILS is not a health care provider and none of our materials or services provide a diagnosis or treatment of a specific condition or learning challenge you may see in your child or student. If you seek a diagnosis or treatment for your child or student, please contact a trained professional who can provide an evaluation of the child.

If you are on the hunt for some new boredom busters, give these ideas a try! These simple activities will keep your kids entertained for hours. Better yet, your children will spend their hours developing skills that will help them throughout life. These five ideas combined will help your child explore inventing, marketing, designing, writing, cooking, and dancing:

1. Invent-a-Toy

One of the fastest ways to combat boredom is to invent a solution, literally! Give your child any household object (or a few objects) and ask them to create a new use for the object. Specifically encourage your child to figure out a fun way to turn the object into a new toy. Explain to your child that every toy throughout history had to be invented by someone. Encourage your child to see the object differently than how they normally look at things. For example, your child could invent a new game of table hockey using a table, upside down plastic measuring cups, and pieces from a box of checkers. After a few rounds of giving your child various objects, switch things up and tell them to find objects around the house that they can make into new toys.

2. Mustache Commercials

Do you remember the ‘Got Milk?’ marketing campaign? In case you missed this 20 year long successful marketing campaign showcasing various celebrities sporting milk mustaches, you can learn more about it here.  Mustaches have been all the rage in recent years, so you can encourage your kids to make their own mustache commercials! On one afternoon, challenge your kids to take pictures and make funny videos of themselves with milk mustaches. On another afternoon, challenge your kids to make funny videos with other silly mustaches. You can even encourage them to take pictures of themselves wearing as many silly mustaches as they can create. Whether your kids want to keep up with the ‘Got _____?’slogan or make up brand new slogans, these commercials can keep your kids entertained for days.

3. Clip-a-Pic Story Books

Keep a stack of all of the obnoxious mailers and advertisements that you receive in the mail. Give your child the stack with some scissors, glue, paper, pens, and markers. Ask your child to cut out pictures from the ads and then use them to write and illustrate their own story book. (You should check all mailers and ads to make sure the content is appropriate for children.) Some children will jump right in and create an entire book without any help from you. Other children may need a little direction. For example, consider giving your child a writing prompt like “Once upon a time Jimmy went camping in the mountains…” Another way to get the story started is to flip through an ad with your child and ask them about some of the items pictured and how they would use them if they had them. Then encourage them to use their ideas to make up a fun story.

4. Kids Café

Tell your kids that they are in charge of feeding the family for one meal served restaurant style. (This activity works especially well if you have more than one child to split the responsibilities between.) Encourage them to set up the dining area like a restaurant and make menus that list a few foods that they can prepare on their own. The food prepared should match their age and cooking abilities. Have them pretend to be a waiter or waitress, as well as the cook. Treat the experience like dining at a real restaurant, without being overly demanding as a patron. Teach your children the importance of cleaning up after the meal has been cleared. If this activity is successful, you can start a new family tradition and have the Kids Café open once a week!

5. Dance Like Crazy

You can play this game in the car, inside at home, or outside in the yard. Here’s what you will need:

• writing utensils
• paper slips
• plastic cup
• way to play music
• your child’s current favorite songs

On the slips of paper have your child write down people, animals, and places. Fold up the paper slips and place them in the cup. Draw one slip from the cup and tell your child that they have to dance like the person or animal on the slip or like they are dancing at the place listed. Then start the music and enjoy your dancer’s creative interpretation. For example, your child may have to dance like a duck or dance like they’re at the swimming pool. Speaking of swimming pools, you can also play this game at the pool! (In reality, you can play this game anywhere you can play music.)

So the next time your child claims they are bored, give one of these fun ideas a try!

Integrated Learning Strategies is a Utah-based center dedicated to helping mainstream children and children with learning challenges achieve academic success. Our services provide kids with non-traditional tutoring programs within the Davis County, Kaysville, Layton, Syracuse, Farmington, and Centerville areas. Areas to find Integrated Learning Strategies include: Reading tutors in Kaysville, Math tutors in Kaysville, Common Core Tutors in Kaysville, Tutors inUtah, Utah Tutoring Programs