Boredom BustersSCREEN-FREE

It’s summertime! And as much as we all look forward to this season, our kids are already bored. With the last few weeks of summer left, let’s look at some ideas for boredom buster activities that keep kids off a screen for a few hours.

First of all, having some sort of routine in place can be helpful for everyone’s expectations. For example, maybe it’s a house rule that there are no screens before lunch. Everyone knows this, so the kids don’t ask insistently as you start each day. Depending on the ages of your children, you could rotate toy bins each night after they go to bed so they have a new bin to play with each morning, or leave out a list of ideas for them to choose from, or have them draw a Popsicle stick labeled with ideas out of a jar. Many summer schedule ideas appear on Pinterest, but examples could be something like:

Mondays – Baking day. Maybe you have kids help make a batch of muffins for the week’s breakfasts while you prep meals for the rest of the week.

Tuesdays – Library day. Switch out your books and stay for story time or just read in some changed scenery for a while.

Wednesdays – Outing day. Visit the pool, a new park or a museum. Make a picnic part of the fun.

Thursdays – Friends day. Having a playdate can help entertain your own kids. The best arrangement is alternating houses each week, so all the parents enjoy an occasional break.

Fridays – Arts and crafts day. Draw, color or paint. Play with play dough or water beads. Find a cute craft online or pick up some cheap art kits.

Even having meal rotations can help with decision fatigue and family member expectations. Maybe every Wednesday you have some sort of pizza—pizza bagels, pizzadillas or pizza carryout. Creating a summer meal lineup can be helpful for grocery shopping as well, so you know what you need to keep on hand for the weeks ahead. Maybe on Tuesdays you always have waffles and smoothies for breakfast, Lunchables (purchased or assembled at home) for lunch, and grilled burgers or hot dogs for dinner. If you have meals the whole family enjoys, don’t reinvent the wheel— until it goes flat, that is.

Now let’s take a look at some specific categories for some activity inspiration.

Art And Music

Swing by your local craft store to pick up some craft kits, paint some rocks to hide around your neighborhood, make some fairy houses to hide along the trail or in your yard, buy or borrow a keyboard with headphones and learn some easy songs, take some drawing lessons online, learn how to crochet or cross-stitch, deep dive on a certain band or make it a point to listen to a new genre or decade of music each week.

Cooking And Cleaning

Summer is a great time to learn a skill that isn’t taught in elementary school, and cooking is a skill all kids who plan to become adults will need to know how to do eventually. Either start with what your children are interested in or give them a challenge every couple of days, such as mastering scrambled eggs, making their own sandwich or pasta, baking muffins for breakfasts for the next morning or cookies for a fun afternoon treat. Learning how to properly clean up after themselves is also an important skill to master. If your kids haven’t learned how to do their own laundry yet, this is such a lovely household chore to be able to offload to them. Laundry is pretty easy, and most elementary-aged children can be taught how to wash, dry, fold and put away their own laundry. It may also be helpful to assign kids their own laundry day, so they know when to do their load each week. Together check out some new cookbooks from the library or maybe incorporate a kids cooking or baking show to help inspire them.

Outdoor Options

Summer is synonymous with being outside, right? Planning to be outside as much as possible can help you avoid a herd of bored kids inside the house. If your typical outdoor activities are becoming stale, think outside the box to make them exciting and new again. For example, maybe you’re usually a pool family. Water is an excellent choice for hot summer days, but to change it up, maybe you encourage a different type of water play such as an old-fashioned sprinkler or a water balloon fight or squirt guns. Try cheap squirt bottles to make it easier for little guys and have them water your plants or clean your fence. They can also paint the sidewalk or fence with water and paintbrushes.

Another example comes from Jess Chavez, mother of three, who says, “Trampoline and sprinkler together!! Also water gun wars!”

Sometimes parents just have too many tabs pulled up in their brains to help their children come up with ideas. That’s where a jar of ideas comes in handy. Take a few minutes to brainstorm all the ideas and either write them on pieces of paper or Popsicle sticks then place them in a jar. The kids can draw an idea out as needed. Another take on this is to make an inventory of at-home indoor and outdoor activities available to your family. I recently became frustrated with my own children f or squabbling in the house instead of doing any of what seems to be a bazillion things they have available right here— from building with Legos to riding their skateboards. I did type up a list of things they could be doing instead of cage matching in my house constantly. Now I can point to the list and tell them to choose something before I choose for them.

Reading

I think with the onslaught of screens, we’ve lost the art of lazy afternoons spent reading. I remember one summer around fourth grade when I would ride my bike to the library each day to get the next book in The Babysitter’s Club series. It’s such a special memory for me. How many of us fondly remember afternoons with our books? Let’s give our kids a chance at that memory as well. There are many reading challenges to keep things interesting for kids who aren’t as keen on reading. Check out Barnes and Noble, your local independent book store and your local library for their summer reading programs and challenges—or make your own to better suit your child. Reading is a great skill to practice between grade levels, and don’t forget to pick some favorites to read aloud together or listen to in the car while you’re running to other activities. I’d recommend The Trials of Morrigan Crow (the Nevermore series) by Jessica Townsend and many titles by Roald Dahl. Ask for recommendations from their friends, too, because sometimes peer pressure can be a positive thing. Older kids can even start a book swap or club to discuss what they’ve been reading or a book they’re reading together.

Playdates

Though adding more children to the mix may sound counterintuitive, playdates can be a wonderful aid in entertaining your own children for a while. I know my kids get tired of seeing and playing with only their siblings all summer long instead of seeing their friends daily at school. A playdate changes the energy of the house for a few hours and can make ignored toys cool again when a friend thinks they’re cool. Set boundaries and expectations early and make sure your children know it’s their responsibility to make sure their friends are following your house rules. Also make clear that the group should clean up after themselves as they go, or it will be your kids’ responsibility to pick up at the end. Finding a fellow parent to swap with is also helpful and gives each of you a break when it’s the other’s turn to have the kids at their house. If hosting or sending your kids isn’t comfortable yet, try meeting up at a new park for a picnic and playtime—maybe even in the next town to keep it fresh.

Speaking of keeping things fresh, check local free and swap sites for any new-to-you toys that may entice your kids to play more. If your kids insist they are bored, give them a dad joke and tell them they should play a board game. We have so many games that rarely get played. Let them make a fort outside and play the game there with some snacks and lemonade.

Amanda Wettersten, mother of two and creator of the One Hundred People Project on Instagram, has done a great challenge each summer with her sons. “Our annual parks challenge! My own mom used to take my sister and I to every park in our small town in a day a few times a summer when I was a kid, and it was so fun. I was telling my kids about it, not realizing there were over 40 parks in our area and promised we could do it, too, but I turned it into a summer-long challenge. My boys LOVED it. We also still didn’t know very many people in town yet, so it unexpectedly was an interesting ice-breaker that helped us set up some approachable playdates. Now it’s kind of turned into an activity hack for me, I now have over 40 “different” things to do over the summer months. My kids love being outside and setting the goal to visit all of the parks pushes us to try playgrounds we otherwise might not. A lot of them we still only visit once a year, but we’ve found some favorites we probably otherwise would have never tried. And it still makes for an easy, approachable playdate to get to know others. We have a lot of melanoma in our family tree, so I also usually make an afternoon to-do list that encourages them to build something, create, play the piano, play a game, read, write, etc., for different periods of time that they use timers for to keep them busy while we’re inside. And screen time gets included there, too.”

Ah, yes, timers! These are the best way to encourage kids to play with something for a few minutes and then, many times, once they get into playing with something, they want to keep doing it longer.

I’m not above bribes—I mean rewards— either. If whining becomes a problem or not being able to handle boredom often, set a goal about it. Perhaps a whole week without whining is celebrated with an ice cream sundae party or an outing for slushies at Sonic. Incentives can do wonders, and you determine the length of the goal and what prize would work best for your family.

Summer School

Maybe you have kids who are itching to get back to learning—whether they want to admit it or not. Getting back in the habit of learning could be just the stimulation their little minds crave. Reading, practicing math facts with flash cards, worksheets or even a learning website like XtraMath.org, or writing a summer journal can be fun and stimulating. Other options are learning how to write in cursive, learning how to type or even learning another language with an app like Duolingo. Sometimes too much free time is boring! You could even give your kids some agency to create their own end-of-summer bucket list to help come up with some ideas.

Stephanie Loux is the mother of Layla, 13, Mason, 11, and Slade, 8, and enjoys her summers adventuring with her children.