When You're Bored

I grew up in a hobby family. My father always had a vegetable garden, and he enjoyed landscaping the yard. My mother baked, grew and arranged flowers, and was a backyard birder. My sister sewed and baked. My four brothers built things-from model cars and airplanes to musical instruments, skateboard ramps, and gocarts.  We had musicians and artists among the six of us children.

I began receiving art supplies from my parents after finger-painting on the sidewalk with mud. I moved on to a variety of crafts, and to this day I alternate between them.

Never wanting to be pinned down to one thing, I earned a multiple subject teaching credential because I wanted to teach so many things. To me, everything is connected. When I ended up teaching math, I always managed to bring science, art, and other subjects into my lessons.

One of my hobbies is collecting empty boxes. This began when I needed some materials to teach solid geometry, and now I find myself still hanging on to empty boxes, because you just never know when you might need one.

All you need is an empty box and some imagination to do so many interesting things. Most kids have played a variety of games with large cardboard boxes. They make great houses, spaceships, and sleds.

Smaller boxes from food items can not only be used for calculating surface area and volume, or nutritional values, but you can turn them into a 3D art project. Then you can write a story about it.

I created this blog because so many kids complain of being bored, and whenever I’m bored, I think about my hobbies, and making something, and brainstorm what I’ll make and what materials I’ll use. It changes all the time, and that’s what makes hobbies so interesting to me: endless possibilities!