As summer break is drawing to a close you may have exhausted your bucket list, or you may have never had one and are just taking each day as it comes. Either way one thing is for certain….your kids are getting antsy. The things that cut it at the beginning of the summer are now BOOORING to them. Sidewalk chalk is now in tiny pieces, sand is no longer in the sand box but strewn all over the yard, it’s too hot outside, I don’t wanna play with that, or that either, let the whining commence. I’m not alone in this right? Maybe one of these activities listed today can provide some sanity to your household by using an item I think most of us have lying around the house: magazines. (You also need some glue and scissors.) Before you get all green and take them to a recycling place, first check here and see if you can do something easy and crafty with your kids!
Placemats. The first activity is all about color. We made these awhile ago, but they are still some of my favorite crafts and placemats! Pick a color of the rainbow and then find and cut out as many of that item possible in your magazines and glue onto a piece of construction paper or cardstock. The key to making them extra beautiful is to overlap pieces and not have any background showing. Your child can pick their favorite color or make all the colors in the rainbow! Magazine crafts are great for working on those fine motor skills like cutting and applying glue. You can laminate the finished product so they will actually work better for a placemat or frame to hang on a wall in your house.
Paper Doll House. This might sound too gender specific for some of you, but boys live in houses too! Or your boy can make a paper garage if necessary. Have your child pick a room in a house and then search through magazines for items they would like to put in that room. For a bedroom they can look for beds, chairs, rugs, lamps, toys, desks, etc. My daughter got a kick out of designing a bathroom. Kids can cut the pics out and arrange them on a piece of paper like they would a real room and glue it down. You can stack the pieces of paper like a real house and add bathrooms, dens, or kitchens. Since most of my magazines were of the home decor variety this was easy but you can change the activity up for whatever style magazine you have. Maybe a beauty salon, fishing cabin, or sporting goods store could be made! You can make paper people to use in the spaces you created or just use small cars or ponies or dolls you have laying around.
Letter activities. Are you like me and just remembered you are supposed to be going over sight words with your kid this summer? Whoops! This summer flew by, but we have been trying to incorporate some sight word activities. Your child can look through magazines and cut out letters and glue them in order to match the sight words you have written down. Or if your child doesn’t have summer homework, just do names in your family. Or for older kids have them write a whole letter (ransom note style) and send it to a friend or grandparent.
Do you have any boredom busters for the end of summer or for rainy days? Do you have any other craft ideas for that pile of magazines laying around? Leave the ideas in the comments and help a mama out!