‘Mum, I’m bored! What can I do?’ I used to wonder how a child with hundreds of toys and books could ever be bored! When I was little I would play for hours making tea-cups out of acorns and hunting for four leaf clovers. My mum believed in keeping us busy with all kinds of interesting things, so that (theoretically) we would never have a chance to get into mischief, though I think we slipped through a hole in the net once and I ended up cracking a patio window with a marble. I was never as quick as my mum (who was a primary school teacher) to think up new things to do. After a few years of motherhood it slowly filtered into my brain that ‘Mum, I’m bored’ could be roughly and variously translated as:
I’m lonely and I what I really want is for you to play with me, or take me somewhere amazing. (Most often the case.)
I have so many toys that I can’t remember which ones I haven’t played with for a while, so I don’t know which one to choose.
I have just mixed up all the pieces of every toy I own in one big heap and I can’t find enough of any one set to do anything interesting, and now I want you to sort out the mess in my bedroom while I come down to the kitchen and create a similar concoction with the contents of the fridge.
There is nothing interesting on TV/My little brother just flushed the TV remote down the toilet/My little sister just fed a chocolate hobnob into the DVD player.
If you don’t give me something to do I will probably think up something very interesting, scientific and educational to do on my own that will make a huge mess and you will have to spend hours cleaning it up, or it will accidentally destroy something new and very expensive. (Thankfully quite rare.)
It doesn’t hurt children to be bored once in a while. I have discovered that one of the side effects of boredom is that it inspires them to be exceptionally creative. They can do some very interesting things when they are bored, things they would never dream of doing at any other time, such as dress their little brother as a ballerina in a pink tutu and take him to the shops, create abstract art murals with permanent markers on freshly decorated walls, cut up their best clothes to make tents for their dolls, paint their entire (naked) bodies in green and brown camouflage, ‘stamp’ footprint patterns on pale beige carpets with indelible black ink, post brightly coloured wax crayons into the soap dispenser of the washing machine just as it starts on a white cotton boil cycle, and race snails across the road to see which one gets to the other side without being flattened by a passing car.
Creative as these adventures might be, they are not all socially or economically acceptable in most family contexts and it is worth having a few extra ideas of your own, ready to distract them from such extreme flights of fanciful inspiration. Here’s a few to get you started: Take a plain index card and create a postcard to send to a friend or relative. Create a picture on one side and the message and address on the other. If the postcard has been decorated with a collage, cover it with clear adhesive film to protect it. Take a familiar jigsaw, that doesn’t have too many pieces, and put it back together again, but this time try and do the jigsaw upside down! Or take other familiar games and activities and give them a fresh twist to add an extra sparkle. Give your child an assortment of sliced fruits, raisins, peanut butter, desiccated coconut and some toothpicks, and ask them to create a garden, person, or animal out of the bits and pieces. They can even eat their amazing creation afterwards. Older children might like to cut up fruit by themselves and create a fruit salad for dessert. Just make sure they wash their hands first! Make peanut butter fudge. Mix equal parts of peanut butter and honey, and then mix milk powder into the mixture until it is stiff enough to roll into balls. Or melt white chocolate and set out bowls of chopped nuts, dried fruit, crushed biscuits, marshmallows, flaked coconut, crisp rice cereal, etc. Lay out tiny foil chocolate cups, or a sheet of baking parchment and let children mix and make their own range of designer chocolates. Keep a box where you store interesting bits of packaging, coloured paper, pipe cleaners, glue, string, straws, plastic bottle tops, etc. Take at least twenty index cards and write on each card a different thing that could be made, such as a rocket, a useful machine, an insect, a new animal, etc. Let your child choose a card and then create something out of the bits and pieces in the box. Make banana ice lollies. Cut a banana in half so you have two short stumpy sections of banana. Stick a lolly stick into the cut end of the banana and spread chocolate spread, peanut butter or honey over the surface. Roll it in chopped nuts or coconut and then freeze it for an hour or so. Amazingly, the banana freezes white and becomes like an ice cream lolly, but is much healthier and very easy for children to make on their own. See how high they can build a stable tower made of connecting toy bricks, or other construction toy pieces. Make sure it isn’t going to fall and hurt someone or damage anything. If you want to be safer, create it flat on the ground and see how long a line you can make, while still having the pieces connected. Make a newspaper about the things that are happening in your family this week. Write reports, draw a cartoon, make up a puzzle and write a recipe and sports page. Hide 20 5p coins in the garden, or around the house and see how long it takes your children to find them all. Of course, they get to keep everything they find! Make a den under the dining room table, or a picnic table. Throw blankets over the table to create walls, windows and doors, and let your child create their own play space inside the den. Perhaps they could eat lunch in there, too. Or create a tent in the back garden from an old sheet draped over the washing line, or pegged to the fence. Ask your child to invent a new machine that your family really needs, and then to draw a picture of the machine. Look out for tidying up machines, and ones that find everything that ever gets lost. Give your children a small empty matchbox each and ask them to see if he can find fifty different things that will all fit into the box at the same time, such as match, a grain of rice, a seed, a piece of thread, postage stamp, small coin, etc. It’s amazing how many small things can be fitted into such a small place. Lift out a small piece of turf from your lawn and sink a large yoghurt pot or old plant pot into the hole. Make cards with each of the numbers from one to twelve printed on them. Give your children a small child’s golf ball or tennis ball, and a bat or stick that can become a makeshift golf club and show them how to play clock golf, starting at each number in turn and counting how many hits it takes to get the ball into the pot-hole. Print a rainbow-coloured strip using your computer, or cut a strip of rainbow-coloured paper. Stick a piece of double sided sticky tape all the way along the strip, and peel off the backing tape. Let your child go around the garden taking tiny pieces of petal or leaf to match the different shades of the rainbow exactly. These can then be stuck onto the rainbow on the matching shade of printed colour. This helps children to see how many different greens and yellows, etc, there are.
Alternatively cut a strip from the coloured page of a magazine and use that as the base for matching shades, or do this inside the house and find different coloured objects to line up along the strip to match the rainbow colours. Have a fashion parade using old clothes worn in the most outrageous combinations! The children can take it in turns to offer commentaries or choose outfits. Let your children create an obstacle course in the back garden for their remote controlled cars, and then race the cars around the course. Or do this inside if the weather is bad and you have enough space. Go to the library and bring home a pile of exciting new books to read that will inspire new adventures and interests. Make miniature books out of scraps of paper stapled or stitched together. The books can be in different shapes to suit the theme of the story. Children can make up their own short story or draw pictures or cartoons in the book. Perhaps they could make an entire mini library. Make a list together of five-minute fun activities, half-hour games, two-hour crafts, etc. Collect books of ideas that your children might enjoy. Some children’s craft books come with a pack of bits and pieces to get them started. Explore pound shops, and discount bookstores for craft items and books of ideas. Start a boredom busting box and add different surprises from time to time to keep the children looking, and inspired.
Need more ideas for seasonal crafts, parties, travel games, rainy day activities, games, etc? Try exploring these fun websites for stacks of ideas to keep your children amused, and your carpets, wallpaper, fridge and even the resident snails, safe and happy:
‘Mum, I’m bored! What can I do?’ I used to wonder how a child with hundreds of toys and books could ever be bored! When I was little I would play for hours making tea-cups out of acorns and hunting for four leaf clovers. My mum believed in keeping us busy with all kinds of interesting things, so that (theoretically) we would never have a chance to get into mischief, though I think we slipped through a hole in the net once and I ended up cracking a patio window with a marble. I was never as quick as my mum (who was a primary school teacher) to think up new things to do. After a few years of motherhood it slowly filtered into my brain that ‘Mum, I’m bored’ could be roughly and variously translated as: 
