Looking for screen-free activities to keep your kids entertained? Here is a list of out of the house, outdoor, and indoor activities to keep your young kids busy (and off the screen) so that you can wash the dishes, fold the laundry, or simply have a minute to yourself.
In February of 2020, our family started strictly limiting our children’s screen time. We found that their behavior and temperament significantly improved when screen time was limited or eliminated all together.
Talk about bad timing, in March of 2020 I started working from home full-time while taking care of my kids and managing the household mainly on my own (my husband is an internal medicine resident). If there was ever a time to not strictly limit screen time, it would’ve been then. But the improvements in our children’s behavior were too drastic to give in.
For the past 10 months, I’ve done my best to find creative screen free activities to keep my 4 and 6 year old boys entertained. I hope this list can give you some ideas of screen-free activities you can do with your kids!
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Screen-Free Activities for Kids:
Out of the House Screen-Free Activities:
1. Go for a drive. We like to drive through a nearby drive park that has elk, buffalo, deer, and geese.
2. Go for a hike. Since we started limiting screen time, we’ve found lots of beautiful places to hike nearby that we had never even heard of before. I was skeptical about taking my kids hiking, but they’ve loved hiking since the first time my husband took them.
3. Go for a bike ride or a walk around the neighborhood. My youngest loves looking for frogs or worms. Usually I’ll pick a “number of the day” and they have to find that many animals before we can go inside.
4. Go to the zoo or a museum.
5. Go to Sonic for Happy Hour. A large diet strawberry limeade only has 44 calories, need I say more?
6. Play at a playground.
7. Go to a fruit farm. In the summer, we commonly visit local farms to pick fruit, like apples, peaches, and blackberries.
Outdoor Screen-Free Activities:
8. Take a kid-size table (or blanket) outside and serve lunch on the porch. I usually pretend I’m their server at a restaurant and take their order. They think this is super fun!
9. Have a picnic. You can either do this in your yard or at a park.
10. Draw a chalk road. Our kids love drawing their own little city using sidewalk chalk in the driveway or around our cul-de-sac. The process of drawing it can take a while, which is great. They like to pick a location for their “house” and add various parts of the city (like a park, the zoo, etc).
11. Draw a chalk obstacle course. We usually draw one similar to this.
12. Make sidewalk chalk paint. This is the recipe we usually use. (I suggest erroring on the side of using more food coloring!)
13. Play games outside. We like to play “Mother May I,” “Duck, Duck, Goose” and “What Time is it Mr. Fox?”
14. Play outside in the yard. We have a small sandbox and a jungle gym, but I oftentimes just let them do what they want. Sometimes they dig in the dirt, catch frogs, or lay the patio chairs down on the ground and pretend they are astronauts, lol.
15. Play with bubbles.
16. Various waterplay activities. My kids love water guns, water balloons, their inflatable water slide, and this water canal toy.
17. Go for a nighttime walk with flashlights or glowsticks.
18. Play outdoor sports; t-ball, soccer, catch, etc.
Indoor Screen-Free Activities:
19. Listen to an audiobook. I have turned my kids Echo Dot into a portable speaker by using this! We check out tons of audiobooks from the library using the Hoopla and Libby apps! I stream the books via Bluetooth to the speaker and they carry it around most of the day. This is their favorite series!
20. Read books. When my kids were watching screens, they were so hyperactive, we were unable to read to them. Now that they aren’t watching screens they LOVE being read to!
21. Bake something. My kids love getting out the cookie maker (mixer) and making some kind of sweet treat!
22. Have a dance party. Using our Echo dot, we stream a lot of music; like Freeze Dance, the theme from Ghostbusters, popular Disney songs, and songs from the Kiboomers.
23. Play a game. Some of our kids’ favorite games are Go Fish, Monopoly Junior, Count Your Chickens, Hi Ho Cherry-O, Uno, and Skip-Bo.
24. Do a puzzle.
25. Color. My kids love color-by -numbers (you can find lots of free printable color by numbers here!)
26. Paint. I have a giant roll of paper and a bunch of tempera paint.
27. Make playdough. This is the recipe we usually use.
28. Do a science experiment. My kids love all kinds of science experiments, from volcanos to these science kits.
29. Play in the bathtub. We have lots of bath time entertainment; like foam soap, colored tablets, and bath crackles. Sometimes I take a washable marker and write letters, words, or numbers on the wall of the tub. The kids have to tell me what I wrote then use a squirt bottle to wash the writing off (building up those fine motor skills!) Sometimes we add glow sticks to the bathtub – which is always fun!
30. Play hide and seek. This usually involves Nerf guns at our house
31. Make a fort. This is one of my kids’ favorite activities (they drag out all the blankets and pillows almost daily).
32. Jump on a small trampoline. Especially when the weather is bad, I send my kids to a small trampoline to burn off some energy.
33. Set up an indoor obstacle course. I typically use things like painter’s tape, pillows, and paper plates.
34. Activity books. My kids love search and find activity books, mazes, and dry erase workbooks.
35. Draw with dry-erase markers (or some washable markers) on the windows.
36. Perler beads. My kids love the glow in the dark beads.
Final Thoughts:
I hope that this post has given you some ideas for ways to keep your kids entertained off the screen.
I would encourage you to let your kids embrace their creativity and imagination and follow their lead. You might be surprised how much fun you all have.
What are some of your favorite screen-free activities for kids?
Stay savvy,
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