Jenga Summer Activity Game

Hey there!  I am over at Brassy Apple today sharing another amazing idea for your kids!  This one comes with a free printable and it is sure to make your life easier!  Go check it out!

School has been out for a while now and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve already heard the dreaded “I’m bored” coming from my son.  He is used to the school day schedule and for some reason finds all this glorious unstructured free time a bit too much.  I decided to do something to help solve the problem and now every time I hear “I’m bored” I tell him to go play his new game.  He loves playing and I love that he is doing something good for his brain!  It’s a total win/win.

It all started when I picked up this knock off Jenga game for only 99 cents a while back.  I had some big plans to do something with it, but like usual all my good intentions went out the window and it was lost in the mess that is my craft room!  Luckily I found it last weekend and immediately got to work on this little project.  I started by sorting all my blocks into their different colors.  I knew that I wanted the different colors to represent different skills, so I grabbed my Sharpie and started with the yellow blocks and math.  I didn’t want these to be super hard elaborate problems, more of a practice set so I stuck with simple addition and subtraction problems.  For these ones I wrote problems on the front and back.  I moved on to the red blocks and wrote down some 4th grade sight words.  My son is about to be a 3rd grader, but he reads at almost a 5th grade level so I wanted something that would be easy enough he could do it himself and more challenging than “the” “and” and words like that.  For the blue ones I was a little stumped. I decided to make these a combination of all the other skills I wanted him to learn.  There are some funny ones (say the alphabet backward) and some chore ones (sweep the kitchen) and some physical ones (10 jumping jacks) and some that are just suggestions of things he should be doing instead of telling me he’s bored (read a book).

So far this has been a lot of fun for both he and I.  I like listening to his reactions as he plays and he likes the surprise of what he gets when he pulls a block out, although, he says the blue ones are his least favorite!  The best part about this is that it is totally customizable for any age.  I think that this could be adjusted to be relevant all the way through middle school.  After that, it might take some convincing… 😉  What strategies do you have for keeping your kids busy during the summer?