- Tips and expert advice
What to do when kids are bored?
These days, it’s all too easy for children to find entertainment on a screen – watching YouTube, playing games or chatting with friends – but they may need a bit of help discovering other things to do.
That’s why we recently published the Usborne Never Get Bored Book – the complete antidote to boredom! It’s packed with ideas for simple activities children can do by themselves, from trick photography to making up dance sequences and writing codes. Who knows, they may even discover a new hobby!
For kids who like to write, making up stories is a great boredom buster, and a useful activity when there’s no friends around to play with. Usborne creative writing books are full of story starters and writing tips to unlock ideas for stories and poems.
And for those moments at the weekend when you want to complete a chore or catch up with a friend, why not sign up for the Usborne Saturday Activities Newsletter? Each week we’ll send you downloadable colouring sheets and puzzles, and links to fun things for kids to do online chosen from the Usborne Quicklinks library of links to the best websites for children.
But it’s not only kids that get bored. Looking after children, especially by yourself, has special joys but can also be, well, boring. One solution is to find local activities that amuse both you and your child, and where you’ll meet other parents.
A rave for kids, discovered on the Hoop app
There are so many amazing things going on for families now – working out which ones are right for you can be overwhelming. Luckily there’s an app for that! Our friends at Hoop created an app that lists over 70,000 different family activities in the UK, from baby & toddler groups to coding camps and skateboarding lessons. The activities are grouped into nearly 200 categories, including Baby Massage, Baby discos & Toddler Raves, Bushcraft, Music (including Baby Broadway musicals with professional West End performers) and Arts & Crafts. Many of the activities are completely free and you can search for activities in your local area by age.
Introducing your baby or toddler to new activities is a magical experience, watching them learn, grow, smile and giggle. They’ll grow in confidence and develop their social skills, and learn new hobbies and skills too. And they won’t be bored!
Hoop – What’s on for families is a free app available on the App Store and Google Play.
About the Author
Lisa Watts worked as an editor at Usborne in the 1970s and '80s. She wrote and edited many of the Usborne Computer Books, which were the very first full-colour books about computers, coding and computer games for children. After moving to live in the Middle East and the USA with her young family, she continued to work for Usborne, researching and writing the first Usborne science and nature encyclopedias. In the 1990s, Lisa worked on Usborne CD-ROMs - cutting-edge technology at the time - and, with the advent of the internet, set up the very first Usborne website in 1999. Shortly afterwards, in 2001, she was instrumental in launching Usborne Quicklinks, a huge library of links to kid-centric websites, carefully curated to support and enhance Usborne books. As Director of Digital Development, Lisa continues to keep Usborne ahead of exciting digital opportunities.
