Boredom Busters and Ideas for At-Home Learning
By Jessica LaFollette, Ph.D & Kali Fedor, Ed.D
On July 31st, NAGC’s Parent, Family, and Community Network held its second Sip ‘n’ Speak: Relaxed Talks on Raising Gifted Children. These informal member chat sessions bring parents and professionals within the gifted community together to discuss various topics. The PFC network will continue to host more of these chats throughout the coming year to serve our wider NAGC community. These chat sessions are each framed with a few prepared questions or topic stems to get the conversations flowing while allowing for organic questions along the way from participants.
In July, our goal as a network was to allow parents and professionals the opportunity to discuss the challenge of responding to our children’s expressions of boredom with engaging ideas for at-home learning, especially in the later weeks of summer. Our goal for the evening was to discover how to transform those "I'm bored" moments into opportunities for intellectual growth and exploration. With a few facilitated questions, the discussion flowed organically from one topic of concern to another. The following article is a summary of all the ideas and resources generated by this lively conversation. What learning activities do you recommend to manage boredom at home?
Hands-on Play and Screen-free Learning Activities
- Engineering and Craft Kits such as Crunch Labs and Snap Circuits
- Parent created boxes with random pieces and props for creative and imaginative play
- Puzzles https://www.completingthepuzzle.com/ This is a puzzle-renting company. They send you a puzzle in the mail with a return label. When you send it back, they'll send you your next one. You always have a new one to work on. Anywhere from 250 - 1000 pieces.
- Board Games and Card Games were a hot topic and generated many excellent ideas of old and new favorites including: Qwirkle, Blokus, Sequence, Stratego, Mastermind, Code Names, Risk, Trekking, Trivial Pursuit, Chess, Checkers, Exploding Minions - Kittens - Zombies, Ticket to Ride, Catan, Othello, Skyjo, Battleship, Uno (and new Uno spin-offs), Mancala, Pandemic, Scrabble, Scattergories, Prime Club, Quarto, Taco-cat-goat-cheese-pizza, Ring it, Play Nine, Abalone, Power Grid, Trigon, Spontuneous
- Creating collaborative family trivia games with notecards where everyone contributes questions
- Taking field trips to unusual parks, museums, or going “behind the scenes” at a restaurant, factory or place of business
Learning with Technology
- Duolingo - Study a new language together
- Wonderopolis – A great place for curious learners to explore and learn new things.
- Camp Wonderopolis – A part of Wonderopolis created specifically for summer learning.
- TED Ed – Lots of topics, ideas, and concepts to explore through video.
- 5 Clue Challenge – The 5 Clue Challenge gives learners the opportunity to receive 5 clues and use what they know to make an educated guess about what the clues describe.
- Google Maps Treks – Such a great tool for learners who would like to explore but are unable to leave their homes.
- National Geographic Kids – Find amazing facts about animals, science, history, and geography, along with fun competitions, games, and more.
- Magic Tree House – If your child likes The Magic Tree House series (and let’s be honest, who doesn’t?), they’ll love The Magic Tree House website. Students climb up the tree and enter the tree house to find some great puzzles, fun games, and quizzes on any of the 45+ MTH books.
- Toporopa – Can’t afford that summer vacation schlepping around Europe? No worries, just pull up Toporopa on your nearest browser and learn all about the geographical, political, historical, and economic aspects of the wonderful continent.
- Coder Kids – Coder Kids is a great company that offers online, in-person, and on-demand coding classes and camps for kids of all ages. Their free on-demand class, Introduction to Scratch Coding, is the perfect way for kids to begin their coding journey!
- Code.org – offers Hour-of-code lessons that are particularly useful for kids looking for a quick class. They can learn to program Minecraft animals and Star Wars droids or code their adventure with Frozen characters.
- Resources for Families (Prince William County Schools) https://www.pwcs.edu/academics___programs/gifted_education/parent_resources
Ideas for Getting Kids Excited about Reading
- Read the same book to have conversations
- For younger children: Illustrate the story or Act it out with toys
- Parents can read the narrator stuff and the kids do the “voices” of the characters to not be overwhelming.
- Record them re-telling the story - News anchor summary of the book
- Movie and book comparison as a family discussion
- Audio books if it is a topic that is written above their readability level.
- www.getepic.com
- https://giftedguru.com/books-for-gifted-kids/ Lists with links and several other helpful articles on reading for gifted children
- https://www.mensaforkids.org/ - Book lists and challenges for all ages
- Bookmarks with deep thinking questions
As a group, parents and professionals concluded that modeling active learning, curiosity, and imagination alongside our gifted children brought the most positive long-term ways to counteract boredom. Many parents shared stories of interaction and/or healthy competition as a family that allowed children to stretch both their intellectual and social-emotional skills. We also agreed that technology can be an extremely helpful tool for learning and creativity while also a dangerous distraction.
If you are interested in attending our next PFC Network event designed specifically for parents and families, please join us on September 25th for Part 2 of our Advocacy series that began in February. This webinar will include a panel of national experts sharing advice for how gifted families can speak out clearly for their child’s needs at school and beyond. Registration is free and open to anyone.
