100 More Things To Do When You’re Bored: Summer Edition

May28

Last year about this time one of the urchins was concerned that she might be bored over the summer. So I made her a list of 100 possible things to do when she was tempted to use the B-word. This year no one is using the word, but the natives, who insisted upon taking a hiatus from regular schoolwork this week, are becoming restless. So I’m making another list, mostly cribbed from a selection of my favorite blogs.

Yes, we’ll be doing plenty of math this summer, but a Saxon lesson a day only takes about thirty minutes to an hour. And even I can only read for most of my day. Then what?

1. Build fairy houses in the backyard.
2. Start a nature scrapbook.
3. Canstruction.
4. Play chalk games. or draw pictures with chalk on the sidewalk.
5. Make mud pies and have a tea party.
6. Have a real tea party with some friends and tell stories.
7. Play with rice.
8. Make a yummy salad and eat it.
9. Paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
10. Work a jigsaw puzzle.
11. Copy a famous painting.
12. Get your bicycle out, clean it up, and get it ready for summer.
13. Practice folding a shirt.
14. Make a poster collage.
15. Make some playdough.
16. Preschool Paper Crafts
17. Mix 2 cups water with a little food coloring, add 6 cups of cornflour/cornstarch to make goop. (I hate it, but my urchins love it.)
18. Cut out and play paper dolls.
19. Watch a familiar DVD dubbed in a foreign language.
20. Make a house of cookies.
21. Volunteer to help a neighbor for free—just because.
22. String beads on dental floss to make a necklace.
23. Listen to Peter and the Wolf and act it out.
24. Make a milkshake or a smoothie.
25. Start this “childhood in a jar” project.
26. Make a lapbook.
27. Learn to sew.
28. Write a story.
29. Watch a Shakespeare play on video. HT: Buried Treasure.
30. Have a backyard carnival.
31. Make up a math scavenger hunt game or a treasure hunt for a younger brother or sister or for a friend.
32. Learn the alphabet in sign language.
33. Make sand pictures.
34. Make birthday cards for all your friends and relatives for the year. Date them and file them in date order to be ready to send.
35. Make a kite and fly it.
36. Plant a flower bed.
37. Write an old-fashioned, hand-written letter to a friend.
38. Go for a bike ride.
39. Try origami (Japanese paper-folding) or make a paper airplane and fly it.
40. Make a collage.
41. Play store—or library–or school—or???
42. Spring/summer clean.
43. Play a card game.
44. Play in the rain.
45. Play a map game.
46. Put on a play.
47. Open a day spa.
48. Build with LEGOS.
49. Learn a few magic tricks and produce your own magic show.
50. Give yourself –or a friend –a pedicure.
51. Take a long, hot bath.
52. Play hopscotch.
53. Swing. (“Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing ever a child can do.”)
54. Go camping–or stay home and camp out in your own dining room.
55. Create a new word. My new word for this month is semicolonic. I’m now trying to popularize it.
56. Start a lemonade stand.
57. Make and walk on tin-can stilts. We read about these in Ramona and Her Father.
58. Make a summer snack.
59. Blow bubbles.
60. Play with water guns.
61. Play scoop ball.
62. Laugh 400 times today. Keep count.
63. Visit a playground. But don’t go to the park on an August afternoon in Houston. There’s a story there that I’ll tell someday when I get over the trauma of it. It may be a while yet because it all happened about fifteen years ago. We’re talking Houston heat, sand, buried shoes, lots of tears and one exhausted, hot mother. I should have laughed. Not a happy memory.
64. Practice your Morse code— or your tap dancing.
65. Create your own Roxaboxen.
66. Arrange some flowers for a centerpiece.
67. Watch a movie based on your favorite children’s book.
68. Go to the library.
69. Memorize something meaningful: a psalm, a poem, a passage from the Bible, the Gettysburg Address.
70. Pop some popcorn.
71. Climb a tree.
72. Bathe the ponies. Or your dolls. Or the dog. Not the cat.
73. Practice tying knots.
74. Swim.
75. Wash the car, or wash someone else’s car.
76. Collect some canned goods for the food bank.
77. Dance to whatever music you have available.
78. Iron some clothes while listening to a recorded book.
79. Paint a picture: use watercolors, tempera, oil paints, acrylics, what ever you have on hand.
80. Organize your own marching band.
81. Draw a map of your block or of your town, or trace a map of your country and fill in the states or cities or other features.
82. Get a haircut. If you’re really adventurous, give yourself a haircut. (Has anyone ever done this—as an adult? I’m much too klutzy to cut my own hair.)
83. Find a joke and tell it someone else.
84. Practice playing a musical instrument. If you don’t play an instrument, try learning to play one, maybe the recorder or the harmonica.
85. Shoot baskets or play tennis.
86. Interact with nature.
87. Make your own fireworks for the Fourth of July. Engineer Husband really used to do this when he was a young adolescent, and I can’t believe his parents let him. He tried to make nitroglycerine once, but he got scared and made his father take it outside and dispose of it! Maybe you should just read about how fireworks are made and then imagine making your own.
88. Read another list of 101 things to do in the summer. You could stay busy reading lists of things to do and never really do anything!
89. Use fabric paints to decorate a shirt.
90. Walk around your block and pick up all the litter you can find.
91. Visit a nursing home. Bring handmade cards or pictures you drew or something to give away.
92. Read the book of Ruth in the Bible. Or another book of the Bible.
93. Rearrange the furniture in your bedroom.
94. Clean out your closet.
95. Make up a scavenger hunt.
96. Make a macaroni necklace. Or string beads.
97. Water the yard or the houseplants or the flowers you planted.
98. Write each of these activities on a separate piece of paper and fold the papers and put them in a jar. Choose two or three papers out of the jar whenever you need a suggestion for something to do.
99. Run around the block 3 times.
100. Make your own list of things to do when you’re bored.

108 thoughts on “100 More Things To Do When You’re Bored: Summer Edition”

  2. What a great idea! We will be posting this also! I love all the links to other sites, as well.

  4. I love it as much as I loved your other list. Really cool stuff. Now I just have to figure out how to remember to refer to this list when the time is right!

  6. One of my kids favorite things to do, I don’t remember it being on your list, is to put on a play or to make a movie. Of course they charge for admission. The latest movie being made is a remake of Narnia, it will probably take all summer to complete it…I get to be the witch (yellow witch of summer since there is no snow in June here!)

  7. Great list. I am printing it and putting it on my fridge. Thanks also for the plug for the 48 Hour Book Challenge. Hope you can play.

  11. I’m definitely bookmarking this one, way cool!

    Surfed in from the Homeschooling Carnival.

  12. What a great list! I’m 21 and most of this sounds pretty entertaining. (I cut my own hair every once in a while b/c I have no cash…all you need is a pair of long scissors and two mirrors.)

  14. This website is AWESOME! I love the ideas. I’m gonna design a t- shirt with craft paints just like you said in #89! Thank you sooooooooooooooo much! It will make my summer better!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ( I’m 11, not a mom or parent)!

  15. This list is an absolute LIFESAVER. As a teenager and babysitter for 2 eleven year olds, I am constantly looking for something to do that will entertain both myself and them! Kudos for coming up with things that people of all ages can have fun doing.

  22. AWESOME!!! I’m always BORED! (i’m a kid) and I was really bored so i googled things to do when you’re bored!!! Thanks!

  23. This is ssssoooooo great. I have two girls to entertain this summer, and there is only so much you can do with no backyard. This list is a tremendous help. Thanks!!!

  24. im sorry. but that was probably the LEAST helpful list of things to do. reality check–this isnt the 80s, hun.

  25. When actually looking at that list, it is boring. there’s nothing exciting and all these activities don’t last long enough. kids these days just like getting high and drunk. Asside from little kid activities, what are some that keep teens and young adults away from this stuff?

  27. none of the ideas were good youre lame at making ideas and most of those people cant even do them because they live in appartments you knob head

  28. OMG! this is a great list!! i am a kid and needed something to do with my friend amber! we are going to try almost all of it! thank u soooo much!

  29. 1st thing: My name can b spellep with a number…groovy.

    2nd thing: How awesome is this!!??!! I am going to see if I can do all of it this summer (the stuff I want anyways!)

  30. Hi, thank you for the tips on what to do when you are bored… I could really use them!!! Hmmm…. I wonder what i will do first! thanx again!

  31. thank you so much for giving me thinmgs to do. All this stuff looks like alot of fun.thanks

    bye

  32. Wow! This will help me a lot. But one of the things that I mention on my website is that if a kid is bored, they can start now to think about their future and try to figure out creative ways to make money! That is a lot of fun because you can be creative, meet new people, and best of all, spend the money on cool stuff! And don’t forget to save a penny here and there. Anyhoo, check out my site at http://jadamink.com. Toodles! 🙂

  33. So my friend and I tried the one for climbing a tree.. and my friend fell down from the top and broke her neck.. im going to her funeral tomorrow.

    so much for reading this website. it didnt do us any good.

  36. As pertainint to number one hundred, I feeel cheated. frankly sir or maddam, this is false advertising and im half a stones throw from having my litigation officer look at this.

    Just joshing with ya 😉

    But seriosuly, if we knew what to do when we were bored we wouldn’t be looking at this list so how can we make our own if we are unprepared and unawaress! (10 points to whoever knows where that quote is from. Hint: Movie :P)

    Anywho, I just found #1 for my list. Comment on random blogs/lists online in a dramatic fashion.

    CHEERS MATIES!

  38. This is really good, BUT I think most of them are either for little children in grades 1,2,3,4 and activites you need to do with parents. I am 12 and going into grade 7. I think you should put more activites for kids in my age group and that they are actually alowed to do….things that dont require any parents, and if other kids have parents like mine who don’t let them take the bus alone, make up a list of what they can do in the backyard or something like that. It helps, but not a whole lot. Its good though! I think I want to make a scrapbook! Alright, well thanks for the help!

  40. I think I will try the sand painting one it sounds so awsomely fun!! Thanks for all the cool ideas!! You should make a list for every season!!! BYE!

  42. i wish there were things to do in here for my dog and i both but these arent bad

  43. i dont think this website is the greatest but i still think it is good, just because it gives people some ideas what they can do when they are bored !! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i hope you enjoy it! and have a great summer!all of you!!!!!

  44. im going to do no 98 cause then when i et bored i can pull one out thank you….

    🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 :p thanks for your help.

  46. sorry but say you were bored why would you really do these things. Children like to do fun things and thing that achually keep you entertained. sorr but its true

  47. Im still bored!!!! What should we really do when everything is closed and we are not 10 years old!!!

  48. SWEET!!! the 3 of us are having a sleepover and just got tons of ideas to do.

  50. hey some of the stuff on the this is cool but practice folding a shirt???

Comments are closed.