10 Screen Free Activities

We are fully enjoying summer both outside with lots of water play and beach time as well as inside when we’re bombarded with thunderstorms. Sometimes those afternoons that force us to stay indoors can lead to a lull in activity and the kids will often come to me saying they’re bored. I love an afternoon inside because it forces me to clean and get things organized, but it doesn’t work too well for the kids. Instead we have some of their go to favorite activities to do all summer long, but they really come in handy when the rain comes to visit and will also work well in the afternoons for after school in the fall.

1. Iron Beads | Hobby Lobby is our go to place for bead packs, character sets and pattern books. All three of the kids love making these and because it’s a meticulous task it takes up time.

Check out these sets HERE.

2. Watercolor Painting | This is pretty easy to do for all aged kiddos and its not super messy. This is one thing we will pull out while I’m prepping dinner. We have the individual water color palette trays along with tubes of concentrated water color paint found HERE. The concentrate prevent the kids from turning all the colors brown in a tray, but they are a little more messy.

3. Puzzles | All the kids really enjoy putting puzzles together. We have a variety of chunky puzzles, matching puzzles, floor puzzles and difficult puzzles. For our harder puzzles that have 50 or more pieces I designate it a number and then write that number on the back of every piece. This way when one pieces gets missed in clean up and is found later, we can easily identify which puzzle set it goes to. I also like ditching the boxes to most puzzles because they’re bulky and instead cut the picture off the box and store them in a resealable bag.

4. Play Dough | Play dough is always a huge hit and its super cheap! We have two bins for our play dough: one for the actual dough and one for all the tools. This also works great when the kids are sick and we add a drop of Thieves essential oil onto the dough and as they squish it they’ work the oil into it. It definitely helps combat the germs.

A new favorite all natural play dough we love is Land of Dough. We have a few of these and the dough is the softest dough ever! It’s also made with essential oils which we love! OR we will make our own and add our own oils.

5. Sensory Table. | If you don’t have a sensory table or bin you need to invest in one. This works great for both dry and wet play. We will often use rice, beans or even kinetic sand and bury dinosaurs, princesses, army men, magnetic letters....you name it, you can throw

it in there and have the kids hunt for the different items with measuring spoons and cups. For Kensi I’ll have her search for letters to spell sight words or make up a math sentence. Sensory tables are perfect for messy play too. Let the kids explore with baking soda and vinegar, practice washing their play dishes in soapy water, or even play with something squishy like jello!

We have THIS table from Crate & Kids. We’ve had it for a few years now and it’s so sturdy for outside play. We have had sand starch the bottom, so I wouldn’t recommend large grain sand. IKEA also has a super cute and budget friendly option!

6. Classifying Objects. This is so simple and perfect during dinner prep! We have some manipulatives such as bugs and animals that come in different sizes and colors and they work perfect for sorting. You could easily use colored cereal like Fruit Loops, colored pasta, mini erasers, beads, paper scraps, etc. The kids will sort them by size, color, order or family. This can be made as simple or as difficult as needed based on the child’s ability.

This printable color mat is great for younger kids like Finn and Olivia. (Linked below) Kensington likes to write lists and draw pictures, so for her she may grab her animal book and classify them by what they eat or if they’re a mammal or reptile.

Color Printable from Alyssa Dawson Blog

7. Cook Together. | This works every single time. Choose a recipe and cook together. This also works well when I’m prepping dinner and they’re ready to lose their minds! Give them something to do whether it’s helping mix or measure. They get so excited about helping and being part of the process!

8. Art | We make a lot of art at our house. A lot. There isn’t a day where there aren’t scrap pieces of paper scattered on the floor. We love using lot of different materials including scented markers, stamp markers, DOT Markers, colored pencils, glitter gel pens, crayons, Chunky paint sticks and stamps.
Also, those paper mâché animals from target and Hobby Lobby are so much fun to paint!

9. Building Forts | Forts can drive me crazy, but the kids love them and it will entertain them for hours. We usually build them over tables to prevent the sheets from falling. The kids will bring all their special things inside and play all afternoon.

10. LEGOs. | I’ll have to keep LEGOs in a designated play area shortly because Etta will soon be on the move, but LEGOs are another toy that will keep the kids busy. Sometime we’ll grab a handful of LEGOs and challenger each other to build different things like a car, monsters, house or airplane.