Time to Play: Homemade Fun

Looking around my cluttered house, it seems that my kids have plenty of choices for things to play with. However, that doesn’t stop them from uttering that age-old childhood complaint… “Mom…we’re BORED!”

Typically when I hear those words, I run through our latest toys. Nope, they are not interested in those today. After that doesn’t work, I try for long-time favorites. Nope, they still aren’t hearing anything they feel like playing with. Crayons? Puzzles? Painting? Nope. No. Not today.

What’s a mom to do? Get creative of course! While I love crafting, cooking is not my strong point. But when my kids are bored with play-doh or clay, they still want to play with homemade dough. It only takes a few ingredients, a pot on the stove and if you keep it in an airtight container, it lasts for a long time. I keep ours dough-colored, but you could also add food coloring to change it up even more.

My youngest recently made flubber at pre-K. You know, that runny dough-type stuff from the movie? He begged me to make it at home, so I did what any modern-mamma would do, and Googled it. It didn’t seem that difficult. We only needed white glue, borax and water.

I followed the directions, let them choose a color to add, and we quickly had a bowl full of flubber.

I set them up on the table with a plastic tablecloth and some cookie sheets and let them go to town. They must have played for an hour. Quietly. We all know what a blessing that can be.

Another idea for when your kids are in a “what to play with” rut are printables. There are a host of websites that offer coloring sheets, games and cutouts that you can print out for your kids to play with. It can be a new theme every week if you want, or it can center on their favorite TV show, book or character.

What do you pull out when your kids have “nothing” to play with?

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