Screen free activities for kids

Surprise a sibling:

Small acts of kindness can show your kids to value their siblings start with sitting down in individually discussing the way they can help or surprise their sibling. For example, they can put a nice note in your lunchbox or clean the room. Let your kiddo come up with some way to show love and acts of service. Maybe make their bed and leave a sweet note about them on the pillow.

Create music shakers:

use a toilet paper roll, tiny cord board box, paper towel roll, even an Easter egg. You can put uncooked, rice, nuts, or corn in it, and secure it with tape or glue. You can even decorate the outside to make the shaker more personal. Shake away and make some original songs.

Choreograph a new dance:

This is great. It helps get energy out as well as pulling in the creativity of movement. Have each kid come up with a new dance, and then merge them together for a dance recital. Let them have a dance off, join in as well! Make those memories being silly.

Cut paper snowflakes:

Take a white piece of paper and a few kids scissors to get started fold the paper and cut various shapes get creative and let your kid make as many as they want. Unfold them tape or glue the snowflakes onto a colored piece of paper, or hang them from the wall. And you do not need to wait for winter to make these!

Make shoe box trains:

With some construction paper, glue, or anything else to decorate the box and make it all your own. Let them pull them around the house and have a train parade. Make it a circus train with stuffed animals as passengers. Or a coal train with rocks you find outside.

Make shaving cream art:

This is messy but fun. break out the cans of shaving cream. you can spray this directly onto a tarp, cardboard, grass, sidewalk, posterboard,

Hair salon:

Do you hav kids that love brushing hair and adding accessories. Add some dress up clothes to add some fancy stuff to this activity.

Create popsicle stick art:

This is so fun for summer time. Save those popsicle sticks and glue them together into shapes or houses. Paint the sticks.

Make portable bean bags:

You can either glue these together or sew them. Add dry corn, beans, or rice to them and maybe add other toys in them to the bean bag and adding a activity of trying to guess what it is.

Painting with dots:

You can use so many things to paint, a paint brush, q-tips, fingers, sponges from the dollar store. This is so fun to customize with large or small dots or tons of different colors. Then let the kids express themselves.

Throw a random surprise party.

Or even a just because party. Do you really need a reason to have a good time and throw a party with your kids? This doesn’t have to be a big ordeal, throw up some streamers, bake a cake and have a dance party, or just a regular party.

Make up a new holiday.

Sit down with your kids and let them come up ideas for a family holiday. This is so much fun to make family traditions and such a good way to make memories that will last a life time. Let the whole family debate what will be the new traditions and core memories.

Sidewalk chalk.

We LOVE sidewalk chalk. When the weather is nice you can bet we are out everyday with chalk. It is such an easy and simple activities that have endless opportunities. My oldest just started understanding hopscotch and it is so much fun. We work on numbers, sight words, and colors with chalk. Go to dollar store then find somewhere to draw and let the imagination runaway.

Paint rocks.

Kids love to paint rocks. Paint rocks for family members, your neighbors, or even to leave on a trail when you take a walk. Paint them as food for outside mud kitchen or add letters on to them to help your kids with letters and reading. The ideas are endless.

Water balloon toss.

Fill up a bunch of water balloons and have the kids toss them to each other. After each successful toss have them take a step back until they let the ballon fall and start again. You can have them try to beat their record of how far they threw it last time. This also helps hand eye coordination and team work. Win win!

Cardboard cars.

Have any left over cardboard boxes from Amazon? Let the kids paint or color with markers to make a car. If the box is big enough they can get in the car and “drive it” or they can make it for their toys. Another thing you can do is make them into train cars and then find a way to tie them together and make a train to pull around the house.

Play duck duck goose.

A timeless classic. This game does need around 3 kids minimum to play but it is so much fun. Especially for littler kids that have endless energy. Having them run around as the goose to release all that boundless energy they have.

Sponge Tag.

You can buy sponges at the dollar store for this activity which is so nice and cheap. You can cut and then tie these together to make sponge balls and then use them for tag. If if your get hit by the sponge you are out, or you can make it like sharks and minnows and who gets hit with the sponge becomes one of the people who are it until there is no one left.

Stomps grapes.

Have any left over grapes? Some that have just been sitting there that are not quite expired but not super crisp either, stomp on them. Now this will make a mess but such a good time. Let them go outside and stomp on grapes and have a fun sensory moment.

Sharks and minnows:

Begin by selecting on kiddo to be the leader “shark” and the rest of the kids will be minnows. Designate a large area for play in your yard and then have the shark stand in the middle. The shark will say “fishy fishy come out and play and then the minnows must slowly take steps toward the shark. When the shark yells “shark attack” all the minnows must try to get past the shark to reach the other side of the play area without getting tagged. If a minnow gets tagged by the shark then he assumes the role of a shark. Then when there is no minnows they become the main shark in the next round.

King of the forest:

Make one kiddo the lion who is the king of the forest. Let the other kids pick an animal to be. Some examples, elephant, bird, monkey. Next have the king of the forest stand in the center of the yard or at a designated spot while the other kids hide. To begin the game the lion needs to roar loudly and then the other children must make their animals sound. The king can only take five steps from the spot to hear the sounds better, and guess the animal of each child based on the sound if they king guesses correctly, the child making the sound, must return to the home base. The last animal in the forest becomes the king for the next round.

Freeze tag:

Let’s be real regular tag can get old. So spice it up with freeze tag!! Designate a home base and a kiddo who is “it”.Then let the games begin. If tagged the children must freeze until tagged by another runner or there is no one left. Once everyone has been frozen the last kiddo to be tagged is “it”. Then they can start all over again!

Ring around the rosey:

After story time at our library we do ring around the rosey and when we get home the girls love to just play that game over and over. Kids love to spin and dance in a circle, and watching them giggle and play is a blessing you can’t miss.

Make sun tea:

Get a large pitcher or jug and put some water and tea bags in, place outside where the sun can hit it. Then wait an hour or more and BAM you have delicious fresh sun tea. We serve ours over ice with a tiny bit of simple syrup. Normally we do a Gallon and add 8 Lipton tea bags. It is so fun and a great way to keep the kids outside! Oh man we have to play outside till the sun tea is done ;).