Technology, it pervades all parts of our life at the moment and I am not saying that is a bad thing, but I feel that we all need some freedom from it and some quality family time. Kids need quality time with you, yes you and for that I mean me in the picture!
We have implemented a screen free day each weekend and have screen free family time at 6pm, but this wasn’t easy to implement. It took time, it took planning and it takes constant input from me. I am not going to pretend that it is easy, so I am going to be sharing some screen free activities and ideas for family time together.
Board Games
We are big fans of board games and as they boys are getting older we can move more to strategy games. Yes they don’t like to lose, but who does!
Cards
I want my boys to be able to have a pack of cards and be entertained. So we have taught them solitaire and we are busy learning some new games together, such as twos and eights, go fish and rummy. I swear that Maxi is going to be a card shark and card counter!
Go for a walk
Now we have Alvin, we do this much more often and we love going out for a family dog walk. Now I know that I am very lucky and I live in North Yorkshire, (Gods own country) with some fantastic walks, which we take advantage of. If your kids don’t want to get out for a walk turn it into an adventure by looking for things that begin with a certain letter or are a certain colour or go on a nature walk.
Do a family art or craft project
Now this doesn’t have to be a big scary project or even a messy one, you could just do some colouring in together round the table or you could make some story stones.
Make up a story
Group storytelling is a great way to spend some screen free time. Story stones are a great way of facilitating group storytelling, especially using ones you have made as a family featuring things that you like.
Make a scrapbook together
My boys love looking at pictures, so we resolved to do something with all the images that I take and make some scrapbooks of things we have done together. The boys love doing this, I print off a batch of images and then we all sit round the table and reminisce about the things we did and our different memories. I try top leave the actual scrapbooking to the boys by sitting on my hands!
Do a science experiment
How often do your kids want to do something and you just don’t have the time to devote to them. We use screen free family time to do longer term experiments and science projects. Science Sparks is a great resource for science based activities. We had great fun exploring our sense of smell and taste.
Cook or bake together
I am passionate about teaching my boys household skills and cooking and baking together is something that we all enjoy and even better it feeds our souls as well as our tummies. Some nights we just get the cookbooks out and all browse through them and make a list of what we want to cook and make a shopping list. Other nights we bake or cook together.
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