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”

  1. Hey,

    thankyou for this list

    i am 12 and baby sitting my 2 cousins the boy is 8 and the girl 5 and when they get bored….WELL LETS JUST SAY THAT WWIII breaks out!!!LOL

    Even though they have NINTENDI WII to keep them entertained i would like them to not be stuck in front of the TV all day
    thanx for the IDEAS! LETS ME LEAVE THE HOUSE WITHOUT A MIGRAIN if you no what i mean!

    thanx again
    go aussies! IM AN AUSSIE

  2. Thanks! This helps a lot! I always get bored, but when you use your creativity, it could turn into somthing fun, thanks! (i am a kid!)

  5. hi i am abinaya i was so bored and after i read this i am not bored at all!!!:-)i am a girl kid i am 10 years old i live in india,chennai,in tnagar kalpathi house

  7. This stuff looks really fun, but when your paper said read the book of “Ruth”, I got surprised because that is my name. All this looks very inviting.

  8. i have six kids and this is just wonderful, i am a stay at home mom and i always need things to think of. Thanks sounds like this summer is not going to bo boring.

  9. Hi
    Thanks For This list Very Much I Can print it off and use it when my 2 kids get bored !!
    One of them is a 9 year old girl and the other is a 7 year old boy.
    Thanks alot you have helped me on my way to a better life.
    Actually some of that stuff i want to try myself . it looks intresting.
    I Will Remeber this amazing site for the future !
    Thanks

    Yours Sincerly
    Kelly x

  10. Thia ia awsome 😀
    thanks, since im a kid and live with my parents, i cant camp in my living room, but my bedroom should work 🙂

  11. this site is a informative site
    since im a kid and sitting alone at the house i can get many ideas to what to do when sitting simply

    thank u

  13. I really liked this website! I am 13 years old and have been raised never to use the b word. I think kids take it for granted all that they have. T.V. (although we do not have T.V.) bed, roof over there head, food, and a very loving family! You go person! For influising good creativity!
    By the way, for all thoughs “older” Kids who posted a coment they are not little kid things. Even if were called teens doesn’t mean we can’t do childish fun any more. Rememder you only have ONE childhood to live!

  14. I just wanted to say thank u 4 taking the time to write this list. I wish I could print it out but my printer just died!
    Also you forgot to mention “play in the nearest creek.”

  18. I was going to close the page when I read #1 fairy houses, but decided to leave a comment saying how stupid this list was. Thanks for nothing.

  19. i love this list, i’m eleven and in middle school, and my mom yells at me when i say the “b-word”! thank you for this list! <3 it.

  20. wow this list was fantastic, it was probably the one that I’ve found that actually had some really creative ideas. Over the summer as a teen I’m always looking for new stuff to try especially if my friends go away for the summer. I can’t wait to suggest these things to my family. 🙂

  21. Cool! I am gonna print it off and keep it around for when I’m bored. I’ pretty much exactly the same as Bella. Teen, always bored when friends go on vacation, and usually the lists I find are stupid stuff! Ok well bye

  22. that is so cool! i finally found something to do when i am STUCK @ HOME!!! (its hard being a kid,u should try it!LOL) Once again…THANKS A BUNCH

  23. This list is awesome. THe Roxaboxen thing surprised me becuase I can remember reading that sory to my oldest many years back. Thanks so much. I will definitaly be printing this list out!

  24. this list is ok….its probably better to kids younger than me
    who ever made this list………could you make a list for kids around the age
    11-13 year olds

    if you coud it would be great
    then again if you couldn’t thats ok too

  25. This list is fantastic! I’m 12 years old and even though everyone around me wants to act all mature and older than they are I want to stay young, and this list gives me so many things to do this summer! I don’t care if they’re for 2 year olds or 20 year olds, its still fun! thank-you for curing my bad case of boredom!!!!!!!!!!! 😀

  26. I thought I would be bored cause i do nothing in the summer. i just searched it and i think it would work but not sure…………

  27. hi my name is thy any i relly like it thankyou for it befor that i was so bored i was crying.lol

  28. hey blow bubbles,fold a t-shirt,get a hair cut my parents would kill me if i got a hair cut by my own but they dont do that old fashion thing they punish me like no compute,r no mp3 player, no phoneno tv gosh they are very very extrict they are very serious with me and they love me cuz im they’re youngest girl well idk why im telling you this but folding a t-shirt come on thats for ppl who do do chores and i dont ok bye bye

  29. im bored and these ideas are boring thanxs for giving me some things that i can do but im not doing any thing on this list

  32. omg. this is the funnnest list everrr ! me and my best friend sam are 12 and its summer and we dont wanna be sitting in and sitting around all day, so we use this. & we take pictures of EVERYTHING we do. so we make scrapbooks also, so it will be such memories to put the pictures in our scrapbooks. thanks so much ! well do something on he list every day ! ahah were making play dough tongight ( that will be a mess! )

    Magggggsteeer (:

  34. this is and AWESOME web. non of my friends can play so i am just plain BORED!!!!!! but this is the best!!! i am going to do number 98 and i have a pool so i can swim, my mom is going to the store and she is going to buy smoothie ingreedience, i am going to do a lemonade stand, i can wash my car in my baithing suit, i have a raido so i can listen and dance to music, i can look up jokes,take a hot bath then i am going to shave!!! oh ya!!!!:D uh hu!!!!:0D

  36. this really doesnt help because i am trying to find out some thing to do with my sis bro and dad and this is all little kids stuf.:(

    thanks anyway!!!

  42. wow this did not help me at all! they need a website for older kids cuz this stuff is dumb!

  43. This list is great! I am a mom with 42 kids right now! (there not all mine!) Their ages are 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 19, and 20. Everyone 11 and under loved making the goop!

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