Five At-Home Activities to End Kids' Boredom

"Mom, I'm bored." Three little words you don't want to hear, right? I know that when my kids utter those words, I give them the usual speech of playing with their toys in their room or making up their own games. Sometimes they come up with something to do and others they need a little help. So I tried to figure out some inexpensive ways to keep them busy to keep them from getting bored. Here are just five ideas you could use for your own kids.

Kids Boredom Buster #1: Bubble Wrap

Save the bubble wrap left from moving, packages received, or leftover scraps from shipping your own packages and place it in a box. Once your box is full and the kids are bored drag it out and let them have some fun. This should keep them busy for at least ten good minutes and is a great stress buster as well. To make the fun last longer you can turn the bubble popping into a game for the kids to play. Have each kid try and pop as many bubbles as they can within a set amount of time. Or have them create bubble art by popping certain bubbles to make a picture.

Kids Boredom Buster #2: Make a Snack

Many kids enjoy spending time in the kitchen making their own food, with a little help from mom or dad. Kids can spend some time making their own snacks in order to kill the boredom for at least half an hour. Kids can help pour different ingredients into different bowls to make their own trail mix. Raisins, cheese crackers, pretzels, M & M's, cereal, dried bananas or apples, bagel chips, and more can be added to the bowls for the kids to use to create their own custom trail mix. The pouring of the ingredients into bowls, set up, mixing their own trail mix, and finally eating it should eat up some time and keep the kids from becoming too bored.

Kids Boredom Buster #3: Newspaper Arts & Crafts

Teaching kids to be kind to the earth starts at home. You can help your kids be more environmentally conscious by helping them make recycled crafts, such as with old newspapers. Teach the kids how to make newspaper boats, hats, or other more complicated crafts to help keep them from becoming too bored. They can use the newspaper hats and boats for pretend pirate play. Newspapers can also be used to make paper airplanes, instructions can be found online, which can be used to see who can fly their plane the farthest.

Kids Boredom Buster #4: Drama Club

The kids are bored and they don't want to follow your suggestion of reading a good book. You can get the kids interested in reading by asking them to perform a play based on one of their favorite scenes from the book. The kids can read the book out loud and decide on which part of the book they want to make the play about. If the kids cannot read yet mom or dad can read the book to them and help them decide which part to make their play about. Kids can have fun dressing up and trying to find or make props for their play. This should eat up at least an hour of time and get the kids creative juices flowing.

Kids Boredom Buster #5: Clean your Room!

This last idea usually works pretty quickly when it comes to trying to ridding the kids of their boredom. All you have to do is say to them, "If you're bored you could always clean your room." This usually gets their brain working to try and find something else more fun to do and will often keep them from mentioning their boredom again.