Hello friends, how are you all? What a year it’s been eh! It’s been so long since I blogged about anything thanks to the curve balls and lockdowns 2020 has thrown at us. I hope you’ve remained well and sane? We were all very ready here for a return to some sort of routine when schools re-opened in September. Luca was excited to be starting in Reception and has loved making new friends and learning to read and write.
A couple of weeks ago one of the teachers in Luca’s year group bubble tested positive for Covid so we were catapulted back into 2 weeks lockdown. Only this time with no daily exercise or fresh air for a boy with no garden to play out in. It wasn’t great for any of us really (my Aromatherapy study went on hold again and Luca missed his brother terribly during the day). I must admit it was harder to occupy him than with two children at home and the confinement made him more needy and me more frustrated as the days went on. When I received an email asking if I’d like to review a Boredom Bag with Luca it couldn’t have come at a better time! (so that was a ”yes please” of course!)
Boredom Bags were born out of lockdown struggles for Ellie McPhail, a casting director and her husband Kyle, a Primary school teacher. With 3 little ones at home and freelance work cancelled for the foreseeable future Ellie knew only too well how hard and time-consuming it is to keep children occupied. Ellie started creating Boredom Bags to help families through the 6 weeks holidays when breaks away weren’t going to happen and many parents were continuing to juggle home working and child care. The Boredom Bags contain specially designed art and craft activities using recycled resources, challenges and science hacks, game ideas and simple tasty recipes. Ellie explains
“Each bag gives children a week’s worth of ideas and activities that will help them keep boredom at bay, and provide a lot of laughter and memories for the whole family. I wanted to create something that was affordable, that children would enjoy and would also create some much needed me-time for parents too.”
When we opened our bag we were astonished by how much Luca kept pulling out of it. I think I’d presumed it would all be art and craft materials but there were also lots of game ideas/challenges/activities with QR codes which took us to YouTube videos. We worked our way through a few activities as a family on a Sunday afternoon and then returned to the bag when Luca was home alone. As he’s only 4 he needed my help with them all but 8 year old Euan could have got on and done most of the activities himself so I can really see the appeal of the bags for older children. I loved the simplicity of some of the suggestions and reckon once children’s creativity is sparked they’d happily come up with other suggestions to add to their activity bag.
Luca’s favourite activity (so far) is catching a ping pong ball in an empty paper cup. Euan and I both loved making the bean bags (today they became beds for the Kindness Elves). I have lots of fabric cutoffs so I don’t know why I’ve never thought to do this before! We also enjoyed eating the cheese twists we made from a packet of puff pastry that was about to go out of date (again an idea I wouldn’t have had unprompted)
If you’d like to order a Boredom bag for the Christmas holidays here’s what you can expect to find in it. If you have any questions before hitting order you’ll probably find answers here in Ellie’s FAQ here. Boredom bags cost £20 which includes postage.
Disclaimer: I was sent a complimentary Boredom Bag for the purposes of this review. I was not required to write a positive review. All opinions expressed are our own (Nic, Euan and Luca).
Nip it in the bud 