Free Printable | Bored Jar

So the kids have been home from school for a little over 2 weeks now and I have to say it hasn’t been too bad.  I’m happy to say that they were finally able to enroll in summer camp and are having a blast!  But there are still times I see them mope around the house saying their bored or there’s nothing to do.  I can’t help but roll my eyes when I hear them say that.  Funny how I always find something for them to do, but they can’t.  So I have, once again, implemented the “Bored Jar” technique.  A few years ago when my oldest was in first grade (I miss those days) she would sit around the house doing nothing.  I created a bored jar and have used one ever since.

Now that she’s 15 -having plenty of friends and activities to keep her busy, I find my younger two sitting around the house, bored.  Over the years I have changed/adapted the bored jar to fit our current need.  This summer I updated my jar -keeping some oldies but goodies -and have added new ideas to our jar.

If you’d love a copy of my bored jar labels, just click on the image above and download them onto your computer.  But if you prefer to create one custom to your family’s needs it’s pretty simple.  Here is what I did:

Step One: write down all the things your kids love to do (I also added some chores, so it’s a gamble as to what they’d pick) add some things you want to try with them as well.  You can use colorful scrapbook paper or type them out on your computer and print.

Step Two: Cut the paper into strips and place them in a clean jar.  You can use anything you like, an empty tissue box, a juice mix container or anything you have available.  

Step Three: Decorate the jar however you’d like (or have your kids decorate it).  You can use anything, ribbon, paper, paint etc- the only limit is your imagination.

That’s it!  Easy right?  One of the things that I learned over the years is: Don’t let your kids use the bored jar unless they are totally out of ideas on their own.  Trust me they will go through activities and be back to square one before you know it!

I hope this inspires you to create a bored jar of your own or maybe you downloaded mine!  I would love to see what ideas you came up with!  Just send me a link of your bored jar (or how you used mine) and I’ll pop on over to check it out!