A Crayon and A Box

It can be hard to keep children of all ages busy day after day after day. Get creative with items you have around the house. Keep cardboard boxes, give kids markers, or crayons, and let them have at it. Adult supervision with scissors please.

• Make a fort/house with large boxes taped together.

• Make a home/town for little figurines. Boys could do this too for army figures or lego men.

• Make a Dollhouse

• Put your little one in the box and let them practice their coloring skills. Hopefully it will save your floors, tables, and walls, and keep them busy for at least a few minutes. 

DIY MINI Catapult

Snowed in with either snow or cold temperatures? Make this Mini Catapult with your kids and have some fun launching all kinds of things from balled up pieces of paper, to small candies, to beans, or fruit loops. The best part of this is you most likely have everything you need to make it lying around the house somewhere. Make adjustments if needed.

SUPPLIES:

You'll need a small scrap of wood, preferably a small piece of a 2x4 but experiment. I'm sure a variety of things would work. A large popsicle stick, a clothes pin and a lid from a bottle of juice or a jug of milk. 

BUILD:
Glue the clothes pin to the edge of the 2x4

Glue the popsicle stick to the clothes pin.

Glue the lid to the end of the clothespin.

PLAY:

• Place small wadded up papers, fruit loops or cheerios or other pieces of cereal, dried beans, anything small and light into the cup and pull it down a bit. Let go and watch it fly.
• Test your catapult to see how far it can throw your items and them make targets for your kids to try and hit.
• If you homeschool or use this for a learning activity ask question and have to plates one for yes and one for no have the kids try to land their object on the right answer.
• Make several and build lego cities to go with them. See if your kids can practice getting items over lego walls.

More Boredom Busters

Plastic Cup Bowling

A few more ideas for keeping the kids occupied during the winter. Find paper cups of any size. I used large plastic cups from the gas station. Set them up as pins and bowl the afternoon away. Have the kids take turns setting up the pins for each other.

Plastic Cup Toss

Next line the cups up or spread them around in any patter that you like. Have the kids try and toss the ball into the cup. Use a smaller ball like a ping pong ball to make it a bit more difficult. Let smaller children stand closer to the cups so they don't feel frustrated.

Plastic Cup Golfing

Set the cups on their sides and have the children try to roll the ball into the cup. Use a stick of some kind if you would like it to be like actual golfing.

Boredom Busters-Mini Pick up Sticks

Looking for indoor games and activities for your kiddos during the cold winter months? When playing outside is not an option and you've had one too many movies playing try some simple games from items that you most likely have around the house. 

Mini Pick Up Sticks

Just a quick twist on the old classic game of pick up sticks. Use colored toothpicks instead. The toothpicks are most likely in your cupboard already, plus the smaller size is easier for little hands. If you want to make the game harder for older children give them a pair of tweezers and tell them they can't use their fingers. Only tweezers. 

Simply give the kids a handful of toothpicks, toss them into a carpeted surface and have them taking turns trying to pull out a stick without moving any of the other sticks. See how many sticks you can get. 

Superhero 6-Vaporize a Villian

Superhero Day 6

Our week of Superheroes is coming to a close. On to pirates or cowboys... I haven't quite decided which yet.

Every superhero needs to defeat a villain of some kind. This game can be done in several different ways. So read on and customize as you like. Happy Vaporizing! :)

• Using 2 Liter Soda bottles print out pictures of Villains from online. Tape them to the bottles. Use one certain villain or a few. Have the children use water guns to knock down/vaporize the villains.
• Do every thing same as above but add sand or water to the bottles to make them heavier so it takes more to knock them over. Use nerf guns, balls for bowling, frisbees, or any other "tool" that can be safely thrown and see how many pins the kids can knock over.
• Use smaller bottles and put them in a small child's pool so they float. Then use whatever you would like... nerf guns, balls, water balloons, etc to hit the somewhat moving targets.

Play

Kids can play with anything. A cell phone and a remote control are a babies dream come true. Pots and pans a toddlers gold mine, and sometimes the littlest things will keep your older ones entertained for hours. Technology is amazing in so many ways but I'm not a fan of kids sitting on the couch in basements playing video games for hours on end. Here is to playing the way we used to when we were kids. Because of so much great technology some kids have to learn how to play where it used to be something kids just knew.