What happens when school is cancelled three days in a row? Kids (and parents) get cabin fever. Even the biggest couch potato is whining, “I’m bored!”
What happens when kids get bored? They “accidentally” call 911. They discover and demolish your hidden candy stash. They. Get. Whiney.
Distractions are in order.
Distraction #1
I dug out a favorite game of mine, Grandma’s Treasure. We haven’t played the game in a long time so it’ll be like brand new. Someone lays out the cards in a scavenger hunt of sorts. You start with the first card, say the dresser. Then put the next card, the lamp, on or next to or inside any dresser in the house. Then put the next card, maybe a shelf, at the lamp and so on. Each card leads to the next card. It takes some creative thinking and problem solving for children to find each card and eventually find the last card or Grandma’s Treasure. You can buy the deck of cards, but you could also make your own deck on scrap paper in a pinch.
Distraction #2
There’s no real name for this game. My mom made it up. I think my brother and I called it Find the Penny or the Map Game. It used to keep us busy for quite a while looking for a hidden penny. Its secret location was marked on her hand sketched map of the room or house. It’s getting a little too easy for P now. It was best when he was four and five years old, but we still have fun trying to stump each other.
Distraction #3
Pennies. I’m not kidding. P will sort money for hours. If you have a penny jar or change jar hidden away, dig it out. Get your kids looking for pennies from the year they were born and the years everyone in their family was born. P loved sorting them by year or making piles of 10, 25 and 100.
Now I just have to figure out what to do for the remaining 697 minutes of the day…
Leave a Reply