“Mom, I’m bored. What can I do?”

“How can you be bored? You just finished what you were doing thirty seconds ago.”

Does that ever happen to you? I can’t count the number of times my children have told me they are bored. With summer upon us, chances are, our kids are saying it more often.

We recently returned from a month-long trip away from home. Before we left, I was concerned that my kids would be bored because we only packed one plastic bin of legos and a few cars to play with. We couldn’t pack everything because space was limited in our van. But I didn’t want to hear throughout our trip, “Mom, I’m bored!”

So I packed and planned crafts, learning activities, games, and lots of books. I planned outside activities to do as well.

Here are a few favorite and popular activities we did:

Crafts: *They decorated white tshirts with fabric paint.

*Paper collages: the kids used different kinds of papers to create images.

*Travel journaling: each of my kids decorated a composition book to use as a journal during our month away. Each day they documented what we did by drawing a picture and writing about it.

*Origami: a great rainy day activity

*Design your own cars: I ordered these cars online and they were a huge hit. They decorated the cars with permanent markers. And because so many came in the package, they did this activity a number of times during our trip.

*Drawing: I brought a few books on drawing for kids. One was on how to draw aliens. One of my kids spent hours drawing little stories about aliens in space.

Science and Learning activities:

*I brought some of our school work. We are studying ancient history so the boys made paper pyramids, wrote their names in cuneiform on cookie dough and did a lap book on ancient history. My oldest also did a book report on one of the books he read.

*We also did a few science activities. The boys did a gem excavation kit. We also made a telegraph out of a battery and paper clips. (this one I was pretty proud of, I didn’t think we could do it:)

Outside Fun:

* we flew kites, shot off model rockets, shot bb guns, and flew a rc airplane

*we made our own slip and slide out of plastic sheeting and dish detergent. Oh, and a fire truck provided the water:)

*swimming, hiking, canoeing, exploring different playgrounds and parks, riding scooters, kayaking, fishing

Places to Visit:

*my kids love to paint pottery so we went to one of those paint your own pottery places where they fire it for you

*puppetry arts show-we’ve never done this before and we loved it!

*children’s museums, aquariums, bowling, and bounce house places

I couldn’t believe it, we made it the whole month with just the few toys my kids brought with them. There was plenty to do outside and inside. And I didn’t have to hear, “Mom, I’m bored.”

How about you? How have you kept your kids busy this summer?