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Activities and Ideas for When Boredom Strikes
© Beverley Paine Since we don't use the phrase "I'm bored!" in our home, we rarely hear our children complaining about being bored. But even without the "b-word" in their vocabulary, there are still those times when my three children seem to be at a total loss for something constructive to do. While I don't believe it's my role as mum to entertain my children or constantly come up with ideas to occupy them, I do recognise that children learn by example. Often they can't think of something until they've come across the idea elsewhere, so it's up to me to make sure they are exposed to enough activities experiences to broaden their experience. What I found was that the few activities I suggested or generated became springboards for further activities. As the children grew they naturally took more responsibility for dreaming up ideas of their own. On one of those "I-can't-think-of-anything-to-do" days, my friend Deborah had her children sit down and make a list of everything they could do completely on their own without parental help. After they'd brainstormed for about an hour they had come up with a list of about fifty activities. Surprisingly, they even included a few household chores like dusting and weeding! Deborah showed the list to the rest of the homeschooling group and together we came up with over 200 ideas to beat boredom, and the list just seems to keep growing! One of the others mums came up with the idea of putting each item on the list onto individual pieces of paper which are then placed into a container, and when the children need inspiration for an activity, they draw two or three papers and then decide which idea they want to do, either as a group or individually. Much better than bombarding the children with a huge list of possibilities, which tend to overwhelm them. By narrowing the choices down to just two or three, it was easier for the children to decide on the one that sounded the best to them. In no particular order, here's the current (but continually growing!) list of activities:
Beverley Paine is a mother of three young adults and a prolific writer of homeschooling articles. More articles and essays can be found in her books, available from the Always Learning Books online bookstore. |
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