“I’m bored” is said in this house roughly the same number of times a day as “what’s for dinner,” and I’ve never had a good answer to either one on the spot.
So a few weeks ago I created a boredom jar. If you haven’t come across one, it’s exactly what it sounds like: a jar full of folded-up activity ideas that gets pulled out instead of a tablet. I’d seen them everywhere and assumed, like most Pinterest projects, that it would last four days and be forgotten. It strangely hasn’t and is still going strong!
Want the printable version? I turned this list into ready-to-cut activity cards, sorted by age, plus a few blank ones to add your own — grab the free Boredom Jar printable here.
What actually happened
The first draw was a disaster. My eldest picked “build a den” and then stood in the middle of the living room waiting for me to build it. That’s on me, not the jar. A boredom jar only works if the ideas need almost nothing from you, so I went back and binned about a third of the ideas: anything that needed me to find equipment, supervise closely, or drive somewhere. What was left were the ones that actually got used.
Two weeks in, the ones getting picked again and again weren’t the elaborate craft ideas. They were the boring-sounding ones: obstacle courses out of cushions, a shop set up with real coins, a “spy mission” that was just hide and seek with a notebook. Simple but they work!
Toddlers and preschoolers (2-4)
- Sticker a page, any page
- Water painting in the garden (a pot of water, a paintbrush, nothing to clean up)
- Sort the laundry basket by colour
- Build a tower and knock it down, ten times
- Pots and pans drum kit (sorry!)
- Fill and empty containers in the bath or sink
- Hide soft toys around one room, then find them
School age (5-8)
- Cushion and sofa obstacle course, timed with a phone stopwatch (the only screen involved is face down)
- Set up a shop with real coins and price labels
- Spy mission: a notebook, a magnifying glass if you have one, and a list of things to “investigate” around the house
- Make a paper aeroplane and test which design flies furthest
- Write and illustrate a comic strip, three panels only
- Set up dominoes and knock them down
- Learn one card trick and practise it on someone
- Den building, but give a time limit and a single sheet so it doesn’t become a two-hour project
Tweens (9-12)
- Write a secret code and pass notes in it
- Plan a pretend holiday: destination, budget, itinerary, on paper
- Learn a magic trick from a book (not a video) and perform it
- Redesign their bedroom on paper before moving a single thing
- Start a scrapbook or memory box
- Teach a younger sibling a card game
- Write a stand-up routine and perform it at dinner (this one, from a stranger’s blog comment, genuinely worked for someone else’s ten-year-old, and it worked for mine too)
The whole family, for a rainy Saturday
- Cook something nobody in the house has eaten before
- Board games, obviously (we’ve got a separate post coming on which ones are actually worth owning)
- A family quiz, written by the kids, marked by the adults
- Clear out one drawer and sell or donate what’s inside
- Indoor picnic on the floor, even if it’s just toast
How to actually make one that lasts
- Cut anything that needs you. If an idea needs you to source equipment, drive somewhere or supervise closely, it will sit in the jar untouched. Independent-play ideas get picked; project ideas gather dust.
- Let them help write it. Ours got far more use once my eldest added his own ideas including annoy his little sister (this one got vetoed).
- Keep a few boring ones in there. The unglamorous ideas (sort the laundry, stack dominoes) are the ones that get picked most, because they need nothing and start instantly.
- Don’t aim for silence. A boredom jar isn’t a babysitter. Some of these still need you in the room, just not entertaining.
Why we bothered
I’m not precious about screens in this house, and the jar hasn’t replaced them entirely, nor was that the point. It’s just given “I’m bored” somewhere to go that isn’t automatically a tablet, and most days, that’s been enough.
If you want to build your own, skip the elaborate craft ideas you’ll see filling most boredom jar printables and start with the boring, no-equipment ones. They’re the ones that actually get picked.
