Every summer, somewhere around week two, my house hits the wall. The novelty of no school wears off, the screens come out and the kids start climbing the walls. Despite the mounds of games, slime and books in our house, the "I'm bored!" complaints are inevitable. With kids at different ages, the answers never quite land — what thrills the five-year-old bores the eleven-year-old old to tears, and vice versa.
So I built a small tool to fix it, and because it cost me nothing to make, I'm giving it away. I'm calling it The Summer Box. It's a tiny activity finder you keep open on your phone or tablet. Just tap a couple of buttons and it hands you ideas that fit the ages you've got and the time you can spare. No accounts or ads and it runs entirely on your own device.
Here's what it does and how to get it going.
The Summer Box
There's nothing to download and nothing to install. Yes, it's genuinely that easy.
Open The "Summer Box" App I Built HereTap that link and the app loads right in your browser — on a phone, tablet or computer, it doesn't matter.
To keep it within easy reach for the rest of the summer, bookmark the page. Better yet, on a phone you can use your browser's "Add to Home Screen" option, and it'll sit on your screen like a regular app, one tap away the moment the "I'm bored" chorus starts. Want it on your phone and the kids' tablet? Just open the same link on each and bookmark it there too.
What it actually is
Each "card" is one activity such as a backyard obstacle course, a kitchen-science volcano, a sock-puppet theater with the age range it suits, how long it takes and exactly what you'll need pulled from around the house.
There are 16 cards, spanning indoor games, crafts, outdoor play and sneaky learning activities. The point is a simple way to narrow down an activity fast, get one good idea and go.
How to use it
The app is built around three quick filters across the top, and you can tap as many or as few as you like.
- Age lets you choose 2–4, 5–8, 9–12, or any combination. Tap two of them and you'll only see activities that genuinely work for both — a lifesaver if you're trying to keep a toddler and a tween busy at the same time without refereeing.
- Type narrows things to indoor, crafts, outdoor, or learning. Raining? Tap Indoor. Need to burn off energy before dinner? Tap Outdoor.
- Time filters by how long you've got: under 30 minutes, half an hour to an hour or the big "over an hour" projects for when you really need the afternoon to disappear.
As you tap, the cards update instantly, and a little counter tells you how many ideas match. If you over-filter and nothing shows up, the app tells you to loosen one up rather than leaving you staring at a blank screen.
When you find an activity that lands, tap the little heart in the corner of its card. That tucks it into your favorites, and tapping the heart at the top of the screen shows you just your saved list. It's the move I use most: over a week or two you build a personal shortlist of the stuff your kids actually love, so you're not rediscovering it every time.
Your favorites are stored right in your browser, so they're waiting for you the next time you open it and they stay private to your device.
When you're totally out of ideas, there's a "Surprise me" button up top for the moments your own brain is empty. Tap it and it hands you a fresh idea, complete with simple steps and a parent tip. Type whatever you happen to have lying around, "cardboard, balloons, paint," into the box first, and it'll lean toward ideas that use those things.
Want to build your own? You can vibe code an app, too
This might come as a total shock, but I'm not a programmer. I didn't write any of the code behind this app. I simply described what I wanted to Claude in plain English, and it did the building. The buzzword for this is "vibe coding," and it's exactly as low-pressure as it sounds. You bring the idea; the AI handles the syntax.
If you want to make your own app, you absolutely can! Try a chore-chart spinner, a dinner-decider, a reading tracker or whatever your house needs.
Just start by opening an AI chatbot that can write and show code, like Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini. Then type to it like you'd brief a helpful friend. I opened with something close to: "Help me build an app that finds age-appropriate activities to keep my kids busy this summer." It asked a few clarifying questions such as how old my kids are, what kind of activities and what I wanted. Then, a few minutes later I had a working first version to look at.
Once you see your app in action, you can tweak to your liking. This is done in the chat box with plain language in a conversation. If something's off, you say so in normal words: "make the buttons bigger," "add a way to save favorites," "the colors feel too dull." Each time, it revises. You don't need to know what any of the code means, and if you're curious, you can ask it to explain anything in plain English.
My advice is to start simple and add one feature at a time rather than asking for everything at once. Just be specific about what you want it to look like and do; and when you hit a snag describe the problem (or paste the error) and let the assistant troubleshoot with you. If you are lost, take a screenshot and ask the chatbot what to do.
A reality check, because I promised plain talk: this is fantastic for small personal tools like this one, but it's not going to spin up the next big social network. The further you push past a simple, single-purpose app, the more you'll bump into things that need real technical know-how. For a fun family helper, though, it's genuinely within reach for anyone willing to type out what they want.
The takeaway
I wanted this to be useful, so it's deliberately simple. There's no login because there's nothing to log into. And, your saved favorites live right in the browser you opened it in, so if you clear your browser data or switch to a different browser, you'll start with a clean slate.
Give this a try or vibe code your own. Getting the kids involved is just another way to bust bordeom this summer. Let me know if you try it and share your own apps with me. I'd love to see what you create for summer fun with your own kids.
