the "Mom, I'm Bored" jar

By about the second week of summer, moms all over the world have one thing in common- we are all sick and tired of the age-old phrase, "Mom, I'm bored!" 

Last summer, my friend told me that every time her son said he was bored, she would give him a baby wipe and pick a room of the house and have him dust all the baseboards in that room! It didn't take him too long to find something else to do and stop telling his mom he was bored! 

I loved this idea and decided I needed to make my own go-to jar with lots of ideas on how to keep my kids busy. Some of the ideas are fun, some of the ideas are not, so before my kids decide to have me entertain them, they really need to decide if its worth it or not! They might get "Make cookies with Mom", or they might get "Pull weeds." They could get "Play in the sprinklers", or they could get "Do a chore of Mom's choice!" 

Here is how I made it:

• I simply took a plain cookie jar- you could even recycle something from a spaghetti sauce jar or something you already have.

• I filled the jar with strips of paper with printed "activities" on each of them. Here are the activities I used. Feel free to print them out and use them if you'd like! (click on the photos to enlarge)

• I tied some ribbon around the neck of the jar for some added color. (Tip: You'll notice in the picture below, I tied only 1 thin ribbon around the entire neck of the jar so that the lid will still close and the ribbon won't be in the way. Then I tied other ribbon onto that 1 ribbon just at the top.)

• Lastly, I added this image to the top of the lid. 

And that's it!

The perfect Summer Boredom Buster!