Mom, what should we do today?

Every morning, when Max is done eating breakfast, he asks "What're we going to do today?" And every morning I am racking my brain to come up with new and creative things for him to try (and also help with his colors, shapes, counting, etc.) So, I have spent some time putting together a list of "Boredom Busters." I plan on just adding to it as time goes on, but it's basically a list of fun and easy crafts to do with stuff around your house. Most of them are from books I've gotten at the local library. Here are a few pictures of us trying some of them out.

Using food coloring to mix colors (in an ice cube tray) and watercolor paint...always a hit

Painting a piece of cardboard with shapes cut out

Using it to throw homemade beanbags. He tries to get it in certain shapes and it's helping him review what we learned this spring.

Marble Painting

At first I had him dipping the marble in paint but he did not like getting his hands "dirty" so then I just put the paint in the pan with the marble. The final product is so cute and we have begun displaying all of his art in the playroom. One wall is completely full already!


Here is the list I have come up with so far. If anyone has any of their own, ideas and/or tips would be greatly appreciated!!

SHAPE MATCHING
On a large piece of white cardboard draw a number of different shapes with a black felt-tip pen, using strong, clear lines. If you’re playing the game with a two-year-old, make the shapes easy to recognize –a square, a rectangle, a triangle, a circle, or an oval. To make this game more difficult for an older child, introduce unusual shapes, such as a hexagon, an octagon, a rhombus, a trapezium, a parallelogram, a kite, and a pentagon, and draw them close together. From brightly colored cardboard cut out shapes just a tiny bit smaller than the outlines. Match the cutouts you have drawn to the shapes. Mix them up in a box and then ask your child to place these shapes over the ones on the card. Make sure she can still see the outline you have drawn when she is placing the shape. The shapes and the recognition of them will help her in the early development of mathematical skills, which she will later learn in school.

COLOR SORTING
To learn what the word “red” means your child must understand what a red shoe, a red bus and a red lollipop have in common. This is difficult because you cannot point at red, for example, without at the same time pointing at something else. Children begin to see color soon after they are born and can match objects that are the same color as soon as they understand the task.
You need an egg box for this activity. To start with, use a six-egg box, and then progress to a 12 egg box. Cut off the lid so you’re left with the bottom, and paint or color with felt-tip pens the inside of the egg holders. Use strong colors such as red, yellow, blue, green, black, and white.
Collect small, miscellaneous items in the shoebox-not too tiny if she’s only three, but small enough to fit inside the egg holders-in the six colors you’ve used to paint the egg box. Use beads, buttons, bobby pins, marbles, and make balls from screwed-up colored paper. Sit them down with the egg and shoeboxes in front of her. She must pick something out of the shoebox, look at the color, and place the object inside the correct egg holder. Show her how to do it the first time and encourage her to say the name of the color as she does it.

BUTTON BOX
Collect as many different buttons as you can. Have a range of textures, colors, sizes, and shapes. Help her sort the buttons into identical groups, such as color, small, large, patterned, and plain. You can change which pattern each time you play. Look for different containers for her to fill with buttons. When she is older, she can thread them on a piece of string to make a necklace or make a collage.

HISSING SID
A basic cardboard snake is quick and easy to make and it can be decorated as stylishly or simply as you want. All you need is a long piece of string, half a dozen or so empty toilet paper roll tubes, and tape. Thread one end of the string through a tube and then double it back and tape it securely to the outside of the tube. Then thread the remainder of the tubes onto the string. Turn the free end into a handle, and you’re ready to decorate.
Using crayons, draw stripes or scales, or use paint to give the snake exotic patterns and slit eyes, or use colored paper and really go to town!


RUBBINGS
As soon as a child can hold a stubby crayon, she can make rubbings. Anything with a textured surface, either raised or, depressed in parts is suitable: Use coins, bark, leaves, shells, embossed wallpaper, a book or greeting card with raised lettering, and any object with an inscription or engraving. Once she has chosen her object, all she will need is a sheet of paper and a crayon or soft lead pencil to shade over the object with.
You can create objects from which she can make rubbings by cutting out cardboard shapes, letters, and numbers and sticking them onto a piece of cardboard. The raised edges will form the outline when she rubs them. Be sure to cut out the middle of letters like “O,” “B,” and “P.” You can make a face with button eyes and nose and cut out a big grin, or style a cat with slivers of paper for whiskers. What will particularly delight is that even though she can’t draw, she can produce these realistic pictures through rubbings!

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE
Draw a simple picture with clear strong lines, or trace one from a coloring book. Trace this picture again, making one detail different from the original. Ask your child to spot the difference between the two pictures. At the beginning, try to make the difference quite obvious.
This game is very difficult, and what seems obvious to you will not always be so obvious to the child.
LATER – Gradually make the differences more difficult to spot. Give the clown a smile in one picture and a sad face in the other. Eventually you can draw pictures with 2 or more differences.

TREASURE HUNT
Your basic equipment is a pencil, paper, and some glue. Draw a grid of squares on a piece of paper, 2x2. Inside each of the squares write a description of the “treasure” needed to fill it. As each piece of treasure is found, glue it onto the correct square.
Vary the number of squares according to the age of the child and the length of time you want the game to last. The treasure doesn’t have to be complicated: A small button, a tea bag, a blade of grass, material, a few grains of rice, a piece of pasta, or store receipt can all provide enough of a challenge.
For younger children you can include some squares that simply need to be colored with the correct color. For older children make the required objects more difficult to find.
EXAMPLES: This clips paper together, This is sticky and you use it for owies, You sip your drinks through this, etc.

MARBLING PAPER
For this activity, you need a shallow rectangular dish or pan, which has to be larger than your sheets of paper. Start with white paper, although later on you can create interesting effects by using different colored paper, especially black. Make enough homemade flour paste (Add water to one handful of flour and a pinch of salt until the mixture is gooey. Alternatively, add water to ½ cup flour until it is as thick as light cream. Simmer and stir for 5 mins. Add food color, leave to cool, and store in the fridge in an airtight jar) to fill the bottom of the dish or pan. Squeeze approximately 1 TBS of oil-based paint onto the surface of the paste, using several different colors and swirling them into patterns with a lollipop stick.
Place a sheet of paper gently on top of the paint and paste mixture, first making sure there are not any air bubbles on the surface. After about 30 seconds, lift off the paper and lie it flat, painted side up, on a wire rack to dry. Use the same method for the other sheets of paper, but swirl the mixture again to make a different pattern. No two sheets of marbled paper will ever look exactly the same. Experiment with different colored paints.

SNIPPING AND STICKING
Half of the joy of scissors is simply the cutting, and even 2 year olds are not too young to have fun cutting. Cut out paper strips approximately 12 inches long and no more than ½ inch wide for easy handling and snipping. Provide boxes or bowls for the pieces to land in and your child will be ready to start snipping.
GLUING: Spreading glue on large sheets of paper or cardboard is just as much fun as with snipping. You must use a craft glue or homemade paste (Add water to one handful of flour and a pinch of salt until the mixture is gooey. Alternatively, add water to ½ cup flour until it is as thick as light cream. Simmer and stir for 5 mins. Add food color, leave to cool, and store in the fridge in an airtight jar.)Dress child appropriately. Add household dye to the glue to make it stand out on the paper and show him how to spread it evenly all over the sheet with his hands. As he becomes more competent, he can progress to spreading the glue with a sponge or a spatula.
Using simple utensils help him to spread the cut-out areas with glue, and then sprinkle the glued areas with glitter or paper confetti from his box of cuttings. Shake away the excess and show him the result.

STRING AND MARBLE PAINTING
For string painting, set him up in the messy corner and give him several bowls of different colored paint, pieces of string, and folded paper. Open up the paper, tell him to dip a piece of string in one of the bowls of paint leaving a few inches at the end dry, and then show him how to place the string on the paper to make a curly pattern, leaving the dry end hanging below the paper. Tell him to fold the paper in half, press down on it, and then carefully pull the string out. Encourage him to do the same with the other paint colors either before or after the color has dried. Each time the effect will be very different.
For marble painting, line a shoebox with a piece of paper, and get your child to dip a marble in paint, then put it in the box, fir the lid tightly and shake the box. He will love the noise it makes. He can then take out the marble after a minute or so, wipe it, dip it into another color, and repeat the process. Finally take the paper out of the box and leave it to dry.

PAPIER-MACHE
Tear several days’ worth of newspapers into strips about ¼ by 3 inches. Put the strips into a bowl of hot water for several hours until they are soft and breaking up. Squeeze all the water out of the newspaper, and mix it with homemade flour paste (Add water to one handful of flour and a pinch of salt until the mixture is gooey. Alternatively, add water to ½ cup flour until it is as thick as light cream. Simmer and stir for 5 mins. Add food color, leave to cool, and store in the fridge in an airtight jar) or craft glue, watered down with three parts water to one part glue. Papier-mache can be used like clay, or it can be molded around another object, such as a plastic container or a glass jar; both make excellent molds for a pen holder. You can use a bowl as the mold for a papier-mache bowl, or for a mask. Cover your mold with petroleum jelly or plastic wrap to make the papier-mache easier to remove later. To make an animal or head, use a blown up balloon, which you pop after the mache has dried. To keep animals upright, sawn-off corks make first rate feet. Leave your object to dry for 24 hours. If necessary give it another layer of papier-mache, and leave that to dry for 24 hours longer. When that layer is dry, your child can paint the object with poster paints.

GOOD IMPRESSIONS
Printing techniques allow children of all abilities to create attractive patterns quickly and easily. The simplest printing block is a potato. Simply slice one in half and gouge a simple shape out. The raised parts will print; the valleys will not. Rub the potato half in a sauce or pan of paint and stamp the image on a sheet of paper.

PASTA JEWELS
Pasta is not just for eating. Bows, wheels, spirals, and rubes are just a few of the shapes that when painted in a bright poster paint, make stunning jewelry. The simplest piece to make is a penne and macaroni necklace. First, make sure the macaroni is too large to fit inside the penne. Then ask your child to take 15 pieces of penne and 14 pieces of macaroni out of their packages. Help her to paint them in bright colors. Paint one side of each piece, and let it dry before painting the other side. This way, you won’t smudge. Let her thread the pasta onto some ribbon or wool, helping her to alternate between the penne and the macaroni. She can also use colored beads.

THROUGH THE ARCHES
Cut the cereal box in half lengthwise, so you have a long, narrow five-sided box. Cut four arch shapes into one of the 2 long sides. Above each arch stick a label with a number on it (1, 2, 3, 4 or 5, 10, 15, 20), which will signify the points scored when someone shoots a marble through that arch. Help you child to position himself low. Take turns rolling the marbles. Each time one goes through an arch, that person scores the number of points written above it. For a 3 year old, you can have a pot of counters beside you and give him the same number as his score, a ploy that will work wonders for his number recognition. Another option is to use toy cars.

THE POST OFFICE
Keep all padded bags that are sent to you, envelopes of all shapes and size, junk mail, postcards, and brown wrapping paper. Stuff newspaper in to the padded bags and wrap a few shoe boxes in brown paper to make packages for mailing. Stick labels over old envelopes, write new addresses on them, and remove the old stamps. Get your child to make her own stamps out of sticky colored paper or labels. Choose different colors for domestic and air mail postage. For the counter, you will need the same low table or a board between two boxes you used for the store and scales will be essential for weighing packages. Use an egg box or shoe box for a cash register and give her some real money. An empty tissue box makes an excellent mailbox. Set it up with a bag or box behind it for the letters to drop into.
When she is in charge of the post office, she can weigh your mail, sell you stamps, and stick them on for you, collect the letters from the mailbox, and distribute them to all her toys around the house. Take turns, and let her play the role of customer.
*Rubber stamps: Office suppliers will make up a rubbers tamp for you.

MAKING MAPS
You will need a large sheet of paper and a supply of pencils, crayons, or pens, and little wooden or plastic tress, houses, and toy cars. Take a simple car ride or walk around just one or two streets, then make a map to represent it. Start with your own street. Put in your house and your neighbors, plus landmarks like the mailbox, a church, bridges, bus stops, or schools. When you have finished, make the journey in a toy car, and discuss what you see on the way. Fill the roads with cars, buses, taxis, and even road works.

KIDS CAFÉ
You and your child can make an attractive centerpiece from painted toilet paper rolls filled with pipe cleaner and paper flowers. If you don’t have enough small chairs, use buckets turned upside down. Encourage him to draw pretty patterns out of colored cardboard on placements, and make a menu together. You write the name of each dish, he can illustrate it.
Being a customer can be dull, so collect an assortment of teddy bears and soft toys to be your customers. The main characters are the waiter and the one person giving the order. You can play one role, or he can play both. One of you can be the waiter, the other the chef. The waiter should escort the customers to their seats, hand out the menus, and take down the orders. If he can write, give him a pad and pencil anyway; he can pretend with a few scribbles. If you need another role, the chef can always be slaving over a hot cardboard stove, creating modeling dough delicacies.
*Check please: The waiter must bring the check at the end of the meal. He hopes his customers have enjoyed it. Have a cash box ready for the money or “checks.”

JAR SYMPHONY
Find 10 or 12 glass bottles or jars. Milk bottles or jelly jars are ideal. If necessary, use a funnel to pour the water inside. Also find a selection of drumsticks, such as paintbrushes, chopsticks, or wooden spoons-or try a metal spoon.
Ask the child to pour the water into the bottles, making sure none are full and each bottle contains a different amount of water so they produce different notes. Then it’s over to the child: he will soon start to experiment with different bottles to produce different notes in different orders.
*Try with food coloring