Boredom and Bookmarks
quality time
DO LESS. LIVE MORE.
PRESSED FLOWER BOOKMARKS
Like many kids, mine enjoy time in the garden. In fact, whenever we go into our garden, my two-year-old simply says, "Seeds?", proceeds to the box of seeds in the corner of our garden and begins ripping open packages. Yesterday, we weeded instead, and this was fun too. We're stripping the garden of summer's crops and preparing to plant for fall. One thing on my list? Flowers. Spring, traditionally, is the time of flowers, but after a recent vacation up north where wildflowers thrive, I realized how much happiness the site of flowers brings, and decided I need more of them in my life and in my garden.
In The Artist's Way for Parents, which I wrote about in last week's post, author Julia Cameron includes a flower-related activity that I loved, and one that can be done equally well at home or in the classroom:
Part 1
You'll need: fresh flowers or leaves, paper towels, and several heavy books.
The first step is to find flowers (though leaves, I think, would work just as well) from your garden or the remnants of a store-bought bouquet. Select several blooms and place them between two sheets of paper towel, and then place the paper towel inside or between several heavy books. Remove after a few days or a week, to find your flowers pressed.
Part 2
You'll need: a piece of card stock or other thick paper, glue, and contact paper. Optional: ribbon and hole punch.
Cut several long strips of thick paper or thin cardboard, roughly the shape and size of a bookmark. Glue the pressed flowers onto the paper, on both the front and back. Once dried, cover with contact paper. If you choose, you can punch a hole in the top end of the bookmark and tie a ribbon through the hole.
What I love about this activity is that it expands to so many different activities: harvesting flowers from the garden or the bouquet, pressing and patience, the creation of the bookmark, and finally, the remembrance, each time the bookmark is used, of the time spent together.
Photo by Eva Waardenburg on Unsplash
BOREDOM BUSTING
Cameron makes a strong case, as others have since, that boredom is pretty good for us. Boredom teaches us patience, resilience, and from it--very often--spring our most creative solutions.
In another activity in the book, Cameron asks readers to list five of their most dreaded activities. Here's mine:
- Committee work (something I have to do for my job)
- The dishes
- Taking car to mechanic
- Annual taxes
- Commuting
She then asks the reader to come up with ways they could make the task more fun or interesting. Some of my solutions--off the cuff--were just ridiculous. For example, I thought I could make boring committee meetings more interesting by hiring a clown. You have to admit that that would be more interesting, but also expensive and--I fear--distracting enough to make the meeting last even longer. But I did come up with: play music during the meeting and have the meeting somewhere more fun than a boring conference room. Likewise, for doing the dishes, I realized that I could come up with reward chart, like I do for my daughter, and give myself a reward for every twenty times I empty the dishwasher or wash the pots and pans.
Even though this exercise is simple, and in some ways obvious, it did allow me to come up with solutions that I never really took the time to think about before. Cameron points out that this same exercise can help us relate to our children differently too. Boring activities like folding laundry or washing dishes can be an opportunity to teach children life skills, and the same problem-solving that we apply to our own dull tasks can be taught to them. In fact, I regularly marvel at how my children actually desire doing tasks I try hard to avoid. My daughter thinks the soap suds and washing dishes like a grown-up is fun. My son is dying for the day when he can mow the lawn. Just last weekend, my daughter and I had had a blast washing my car. The message is a simple one, but an important one nonetheless: Art is about creativity, and even a simple exercise like brainstorming ways to make dreaded chores more fun, is an exercise in creativity. Don't like brushing your teeth every morning...How can we make it more fun?
How do you handle boredom--at home or in your classroom? Share your ideas in the Comments section below.
Photo by Chance Anderson on Unsplash
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