If you’ve already played Candyland with your kids 800 times (or it just feels like it!), read on. Sara Weeks, the play therapist at Annie’s Place, has a few helpful ideas for beating boredom this summer.

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For physical development/gross motor:

* Sidewalk obstacle course

Create an obstacle course on your sidewalk using chalk. Challenge your child to hop on one foot, grapevine, leapfrog, walk backwards, slide sideways. Once they get to the end, turn around and do it backwards.

* Water Play

Get out a sprinkler, a blowup or plastic pool, a water table. Beat the heat while stimulating your child’s need for water play.

* Get creative with cardboard

Save an Amazon box and give it to your child with different art supplies - let them paint it, cut it, make it into a fort, a dollhouse, a race car, or a spaceship—let their creativity and gross motor skills go wild!

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* Wash the car

Grab the soap and a hose and work together to clean the car. Splash each other with the hose, see who can get the most dirt on their sponge. Even if your car needs a professional wash when you’re done, you’ll have cooled off, had a blast and made memories together.

* Ball toss

Set up mixing bowls, pots and pans in lines, and have your children stand behind a line and take turns trying to get their balls (varying in size depending on age of child - tennis balls down to cotton balls size) into the different containers. Label each container with a points value and practice adding or counting the number of balls (depending on child’s age).

* Make musical instruments

Using old tissue boxes, string, paper towel rolls, pots and pans, beads, cans, etc., you can make guitars, drums, or maracas. Play your favorite music, and let your family band play along.

* Home bowling

Line up plastic or reusable water bottles as pins. Use scorekeeping to work on math and counting.

For physical development/fine motor:

* Treasure hunt

Hide small items in a container of sand. Use tweezers, tongs or other grabbers to pick up items and examine them. Sort them by size or color or texture.

* Break the ice

Freeze small plastic toys in a large block of ice. Allow your child to use plastic tools, utensils or real tools, if age-appropriate, to break the items free from the ice. Add a shaker of salt or squeeze bottles of water to your tools and see what happens to the ice!

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* Bake together.

Allow your child to practice measuring and taste testing the ingredients. In a spill-safe environment allow them to test pouring ingredients, measuring, and learning about the quantity measurements used in baking.

* Journal time

Set aside 15 minutes every day for your child to write or draw about their day. This can help with expression, writing, and memory.

* Marshmallows and toothpicks

Give children marshmallows and toothpicks to create structures. If they need guidance, give simple instructions like “build a house,” and see how their imagination and architectural skills soar.

* Tin foil sculpting

Fill a hat with ideas of what you could “sculpt” out of tinfoil. Take turns pulling from the hat, and see if you can create that item.

* “Feel it out” box

Put a collection of items of varying size, shape and texture in an empty tissue box. Have children reach into the box, blindfolded, to feel and guess what item they are grabbing.

For creativity, social-emotional development:

* Create a deck of animal cards

Draw pictures of animals, one per page, to use for a game of “be an animal.” Draw a card from the deck, encourage your child to walk like the animal, talk like the animal, and tell any facts about the animal they may know (like letter it starts with, where it lives, etc.)

* Create a nature mandala

Walk around the neighborhood together collecting leaves, flowers, rocks, feathers, or anything from nature. Come home, and on the sidewalk or on a blank sheet of paper, create a nature mandala.

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* Read

Read to your child or have them read to themselves. You can make it a challenge to read one -10 books, depending on their age, by the end of the week. At the end of the week have your child retell their favorite story, and give an award for finishing.

* Sock puppets

Put those lonely lost socks to use! Create puppets by drawing on old socks or using arts and crafts supplies. Have your kids come up with and present a puppet show

Collect rocks from around your neighborhood. Let your kids paint on them, and walk around the neighborhood leaving them in different places to brighten another neighbors' day. There may be others in your neighborhood doing the same, and you can ‘take a rock, leave a rock’ for your new neighbor friend.

* Hidden treasure

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Have your kids make a treasure map for you! Teach them the concept by creating your own, then give them the materials (I.e. pennies, buttons, etc.) to hide treasure for you to find using their home drawn maps.

* Make your own music video

Let your children choose the song, the costumes, the choreography, and you film it! They will love to watch themselves in their very own music video. And if you made your own instruments earlier in the week, you can use them for your music video!

Summer Boredom Busters