Ever since I first saw the idea for bored jars (thank you, Pinterest), I’ve always wanted to do one. I finally got around to it last week, and thought I’d share what I included. You’ll notice that these are all indoor-activities; my idea is to use these on bad-weather days throughout the summer, so I’m calling ours ‘Rainy Day Activities’.

They aren’t particularly pretty, but this is what I had on hand and it works. Here is what I’ve included:

• build a fort
• pick out a book we haven’t read in a while
• get out the play-doh
• play with the living sand
• clean the mirrors and windows (my kids think this is a treat!)
• have a pillow fight
• target practice with Nerf guns
• make paper airplanes (we have this cool book)
• bake cookies
• switch over the toys (I rotate through our toys every few weeks, so the day I switch them over always feels like Christmas morning!)
• send letters to grandparents
• take silly pictures
• dust the baseboards
• go on a treasure hunt
• make popcorn
• play hide n seek
• play a board game
• wipe down the walls
• do a puzzle
• paint with watercolors
• do an activity book (I love Kumon books, each of my boys have a few)
• look at photo albums
• read nursery rhymes
• do some Go-Noodle videos
• have an indoor picnic
• read a magazine (we have a current subscription to Highlights and will replace that with National Geographic Little Kids when it runs out)
• watch a movie

I just finished this the other day, and so far we’ve had such great weather I haven’t had a chance to have the kids pull out any activities yet. I’m almost looking forward to some bad weather, I think this will be a lot of fun. Have you ever made a bored jar or something like it? What would you add?