So, of course, we haven’t managed to get through the long summer break without hearing ‘I’m bored’ a couple of times. Usually I just send the kids off to play (unless it’s me who is bored!) and they’ve forgotten they were bored within seconds, but last week I decided to embrace the boredom and let it inspire our first family song-writing session.

I found a big piece of card and set the kids to work writing and drawing things that they thought were boring and things that definitely weren’t (I prompted them by asking about activities, books, foods, songs, places, etc).

We worked out a quick chorus based on the very few ukulele chords I could remember:
We’re bored, bored, al-ways bored.
We’re bored, bored, ev’ry day bored.
(F, C, G7, C, F, C, G7, C)

We’re still working on some verses talking about the ideas they sketched out and attempting to disprove the premise of the chorus!

This could qualify as a very quick activity as you need only go so far as brainstorming some ideas – in our case that seemed to be enough to remind the kids that actually they weren’t that bored at all.

If you want to continue with the activity you could…

• Convert your ideas into lyrics or a poem.
• Set your lyrics to an existing tune or compose your own.
• Make your ideas into a craft project and make a big BORING poster, with written ideas, drawings, collage etc.
• Practice together, and perform your masterpiece!

This is an activity we keep returning to – I’m hoping we’ll have an end product at some stage but, even if not, we’ve had a good time trying to be songwriters. And it’s never a bad thing to be reminded that there’s plenty of fun stuff happening in our lives!

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “( YAWN ).”