They’re socially-distanced, hormonal, maybe driving someone crazy. Grab 71 ideas for the quarantined, bored teens in your life.
Bored teens? Start here.
- Make lip balm, lip scrub, or bubble bath with stuff you have around the house.
- Start a devotional or journal. (My daughter and I are trying The Courageous Creative. Sometimes we double it with face masks.)
- Pedicure thyself.
- Play the Name Game.
- Play the Newlywed Game for families (grab it here).
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Camp in your yard.
- Help out a parent.
- Play Charades or Pictionary.
- Go on a bike ride.
- Clean out the thing that used to look like your closet.
- Create your own memes or social media graphics on Canva.com.
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Create a “Quarantunes” playlist to share with other bored teens.
- Read to one of your sibs using a book you loved as a kid.
- Try out computer games the ‘rents might not mind you playing, like Simple Planes or Simple Physics.
- Plan a video scavenger hunt with friends: On a group video chat, a parent/moderator gives a list of items around the house to gather one at a time.
- Have a strategy game marathon. My kids like the usuals: Risk, Diplomacy, Dominion, Axis & Allies.
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Purchase a pogo stick for big kids/adults.
- If your child is a writer, have them sign up for NaNoWriMo.
- Make dinner. Crush it.
- Order supplies for henna tattoos, and make easy designs on each other.
- Read a chapter book together.
- Design artwork for your room; maybe start with a canvas.
- Read up on tips to great photography. Challenge yourself to post one of your photos on social media every day.
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Solve a digital escape room.
- Find a great audiobook. If you want, make the number of books absorbed a competition with someone else.
- Memorize Scripture for a reward.
- Download (um, and use) a free workout app, like Down Dog’s HIIT, Barre, or 7-minute workout apps–all free until May 1, 2020.
- Take an online course for something you’ve always wanted to do: martial arts, guitar, drawing, architecture, cake decorating.
- Practice the instrument you wish you were good at but aren’t yet.
- Do at least one positive, productive thing toward social justice: Write a senator. Find out how to be more green. Create a meme. Research what organization doing great stuff in your area you could volunteer for after all this is over.
- Hang tissue flowers or origami at different lengths of thread from your ceiling.
- Go on a hike.
- Make a Tik-tok video.
- Make this 5-minute ice cream. Add your best mix-ins.
- Walk the dog of a neighbor.
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Paint terra-cotta flower pots to plant something you like–a salsa garden?
- Design elaborate chalk art on your sidewalk. Or learn to make your own chalkboard mural like a pro.
- Paint your room.
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Make rock candy.
- Pull out colored pencils for an adult coloring book.
- Reach out to someone you know is isolated or freaking out.
- Create a collage on your bulletin board.
- Hello–weekend movie marathon. Lord of the Rings, Back to the Future, The Bourne trilogy, Star Wars. You got this.
- Write down your bucket list.
- Finish a jigsaw puzzle.
- Start a one-line-a-day journal, like this one that lasts 5 years.
- Make slime.
- Ask your parent to begin teaching you something–like woodworking.
- Make a good movie. Or make a bad one, and laugh at it.
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Perform a totally covert act of kindness.
- Create the best recipe for pizza or nachos.
- Decorate your own T-shirt with glitter or upcycle it with some easy alterations.
- Make a bag out of an old T-shirt.
- Find a watercolor tutorial on Pinterest.
- Learn how to make no-knead bread in like, 10 minutes. Shock your family.
- Go fishing.
- Make a time capsule.
- Make a photo book (Flickr, Chatbooks, etc.).
- Challenge a sibling or parent to a paper airplane competition.
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Start a podcast. (Research how to do it well.)
- Create a killer smoothie recipe.
- Learn to grill. Create your own rub (spice) recipe.
- Make popsicles. (My daughter likes berry cheescake ones.)
- Make a copycat frappucino.
- Go on a run.
- Pray for someone.
- Create your own bath bombs.
- Pick a free workout video on Fitness Blender.
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Learn hand lettering.
- Surprise someone in a good way.
- Make your own kite. Fly it.
You’ve been there: Whirling into a coffee shop or dinner with friends. Or talking on the phone while your kids fight in the other room (#methisweek) and you try to remember whether you’ve added salt to the recipe you’re cooking, dang it.
A couple of weeks ago, my son and I attempted homemade ravioli. I say attempted not because they didn’t taste good. (They tasted great!) I say this because in the midst of chaos–some foreseen, some not-so-much–we didn’t really seal the little ravioli pillows correctly. So ricotta leaked out into the water. Never fear: Every single one of the little guys was still eaten up, and since perfect ravioli wasn’t the goal, I’d consider it a smashing (smashed?) success.
For a year in Uganda, I taught a class at a local institution for early childhood education teachers. I’d haul in boxes of file folder games and bottle caps and flour for us to make playdough together. I’d bring along one of my kids to show them how the games worked, and we’d split up into “centers” for them to try out games involving clothespins and string and painting with water on cement. I wanted them to feel and smell and hear and taste how fun it could be to teach kids early math skills; to know how to read. In a country where it was still acceptable to cane children in the classroom, I wanted to show them that by getting kids excited about learning–rather than shamed–teachers cut their work in half. Why?
![Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language](https://www.janelbreitenstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/love-languages-text-1.jpg "Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language")
