Get bored kids busy making things and doing fun activities. Here's help.
Bored kids can be a real challenge! They seem to have a special way of getting underfoot and under your skin! Here are some sure-fire ways to keep them out of your hair the next rainy day.
Paper Painting
You want to encourage the kids to be creative, but not messy? Here's the perfect solution. Get out all those paper grocery bags you've been saving and cut the sides off. Give your children paintbrushes and mugs of water and let them get creative! If anything spills, it's only water!
HINT: To get them outside, let them paint the sidewalk or even the garage door with water.
Egg Carton Mania
Break out all those egg cartons you've saved up and let the kids have at them. By cutting out each cup, they can create their own tea sets, just let them color the cups and even add twisted paper or pipe cleaner handles. Or create a zoo! Take a cup and cut arches out of three sides to form legs and then make two cuts for the third side, folding up the flap for a head. Color the animals and use scraps to make fences.
Paper Dolls
Remember when your mother used to make you paper dolls to play with? Give your children the same pleasure. You'll need a cereal box or cardboard of the same thickness. Draw a doll standing with legs together, feet turned out and arms stuck out at 45 degree angles. If you don't feel confident enough to draw it yourself, you can always trace a magazine picture. Add features such as the face and hair and underwear.
To make clothing for the doll, lay it on a piece of white paper and trace around the part you wish to clothe. For dresses, flare out at the waist. Remove the doll from the paper and fill in the lines at the neck, arms and legs. Don't forget to add tabs at the shoulders and waist! Now let your child color in the clothes, cut them out and voila! A toy to keep them occupied for ages. You can try making an entire family, right down to the family dog, if you want.
Beading
The next time you're in a craft store, pick up a bag of assorted beads and keep them for a rainy day. Kids love beads, especially the fancy jewel-like ones. Let them sort the beads by color and shape into egg cartons, or string them onto a shoelace. Older kids can do some actual beading, if you get a beading book for them as well. You can find such books in most libraries as well.
Stained Glass
This is a project that my mother used a lot. You'll need white glue, assorted yarn and paper, glitter or anything colorful. Using scissors, have the kids clip everything into tiny pieces like confetti. Put a few tablespoons of glue into a yogurt container and mix in the confetti. Now pour the mixture out onto waxed paper and let it dry. Presto, flexible stained glass!
HINT: Using seed beads and scraps of tissue paper add a neat effect.
Make a Tape
Keep a couple of blank cassette tapes on hand and bring them out when your child starts complaining about being bored. Let him record whatever he wants on the tape. Some ideas are reading a book onto the tape for a younger sibling, sharing some funny jokes, or telling a story complete with sound effects. He'll love listening to his own voice and if you label and save the tape, it will make a good keepsake later in life. I have an old tape from when I was only about six, it's full of my arguing with my younger sisters over who should have the mike. Very entertaining.
Puppets
You know all those old socks that no longer have mates? Don't throw them out just yet, they're perfect candidates for becoming puppets. Just draw or glue eyes on (wiggly eyes are lots of fun!), add some yarn or drawn hair, slip in a hand and there you have it, a real live sock puppet! Of course, if your child is really creative, they can add as many features as they want, right down to clothing drawn or glued onto the puppet. Fabric paint or permanent markers work well.
Paper lunch bags make good puppets, too. Just turn them upside down, fold the bottom down to face you and draw on a face. You can let your child paint or color the puppet and even glue on some fake hair or yarn.
Pipe Cleaners
Remember these? Fuzzy and bendable, pipe cleaners are lots of fun and available at any craft store in a variety of fun colors and types. Everything from really fat fluffy ones to glitter ones. Get a selection and allow your kids to make stick people and animals out of them. A couple attatched to a headband make excellant antennaes for your cute little alien, or twist two together and loop to make a bracelet. Once again imaginations can run wild.
Sand Painting
For this fun project, you'll need colored chalk, salt, and glue. Draw a design on a piece of cardboard. Now use a hammer to pulverize the chalk and mix it with salt in seperate containers. Egg cartons work well to keep the colors apart.
Spread glue over one area of the picture at a time. Sprinkle the desired color of salt on the glue and shake off excess onto a sheet of paper. Keep on going until the whole design is done. Now you have something unique to hang on the fridge.
HINT: Native designs especially lend themselves to this sort of work, but don't limit the kids.
Sand Sculpture
Save up some baby food jars and mix up colored salt as instructed above. Pour layers of colored salt in and use a toothpick to mold hills and lakes. For example, pour in a layer of green and push it into irregular waves along the edges of the glass. Pour blue salt into the hollows and then lighter blue over that. Add patches of white salt here and there for clouds, adjusting with a toothpick to create the look you want and put the lid on. You can make an entire collection of these beautiful landscapes to sit in a window sill or mantle.
Write a Book
Take regular computer paper and cut it in half. Stack neatly and fold a sheet of construction paper around it to form a cover. Staple together for a book that your child can decorate. Crayons, markers or stickers can be used on the cover and for illustrations inside. If your child doesn't like to write or is too young, you can add the text while they dictate.
