Get back to basics these school holidays with these ‘old school’ screen free play ideas. They’re fun, budget friendly, and a great starting point to encourage creativity.
Try a few of these ideas, or challenge your kids, and yourself, to try at least one idea each and every day of the school holidays. Whatever works for your family.
If possible, set aside some time each day to ‘play’ with your kids. If you’re working from home, try some of the below ideas to keep your kids occupied while you get some other tasks done.
Feel free to adapt the ideas depending on the age and stage of your kids. Our teenager still loves to set up a blanket over some chairs for a cosy reading nook during the holidays. The interests and abilities of your children might also determine how involved you want (or need) to be.
Use our FREE printable for inspiration and as a checklist to mark off as you try each idea. You can try the ideas in order, or print a second copy, cut each idea along the lines, fold, and place in a jar. Give the jar a shake, then let your kids pull out an idea at random each day.
Have fun!
1. Build a blanket cubby or fort
Grab a blanket (or bed sheet), a couple of chairs and voila! You’ve got the makings of a cubby, fort or secret cave. If you’ve got more room, add more chairs and more blankets held together with pegs for a larger cubby. Pop in a couple of cushions, some books and a favourite soft toy and you’ve created a cosy reading nook!
2. Cook
Spend some time in the kitchen together. Make a batch of freezable goodies. Make some for now and some to freeze for back to school lunch boxes. Check out our post for 5 tips for cooking with kids.
3. Get outside
Go on a family walk, create a nature scavenger hunt, or plant some veges in the garden. If you live in Australia, Organic Gardener have an easy way to create your own planting guide.
4. Send a letter
I still love to receive letters and packages in the mail and kids seem to love it even more so. Encourage your kids to write a letter, draw a picture or create an artwork for someone special and post it to them. If you’re traveling over the school holidays, why not send someone a postcard while you’re away?
5. Play cards
Depending on your child’s age and abilities, pull out a deck of cards and teach them a card game. Littlies can try matching patterns (hearts, diamonds etc.) or putting numbers in order. Uno is a great card game for kids, involving matching colours and numbers. Let your older kids teach you a card game you haven’t played before.
6. Make your own play recipe
Many DIY play recipes are easy to make and use ingredients you probably already have in the kitchen. No cook play dough is always a favourite. As well as this super easy recipe for DIY puffy paint. If you’ve never made Goop (or Oobleck). Try this easy recipe:
Homemade Goop (or Ooblek)
This is a great recipe if you’re a gluten free family, but it’s heaps of fun for everybody. It can get messy, so you’ll want to put a plastic tablecloth or towel underneath where you’re playing, or better yet, take the fun outside and get messy!
Goop, otherwise known as Ooblek, has a bizarre consistency. Sometimes liquid, sometimes solid, it changes if you try to drag your spoon or fingers through it slowly or quickly. If you try to pick up the solid mixture from the bottom of the bowl, it immediately melts through your fingers. If you work super fast you might be able to grab a handful and roll into a ball before it returns to a liquid.
You will need
2 cups cornflour (made from corn)
1 cup water
food colouring (optional)
What to do
- Pour some cornflour into a mixing bowl.
- Stir in small amounts of water until the cornflour has become a very thick paste.
- To make the goop the colour of your choice, thoroughly stir a few drops of food colouring into the mixture.
- Stir your goop really slowly. This shouldn’t be hard to do.
- Stir your goop really fast. This should be almost impossible.
- Now punch your goop really hard and fast. It should feel like you’re punching a solid.
- Then try to pick up the goop and it will run through your fingers
- You can keep your cornflour and water mixture covered in a fridge for several days. If the cornflour settles, you need to stir it to make it work well again.
7. Build with junk
Set up a ‘junk’ art station for your kids to get creative. Items that would usually go in the recycling bin are perfect. Clean, dry recyclables such as tissue boxes, milk bottle lids (that have been washed and dried), cardboard paper towel tubes, plastic containers, egg cartons, any sized cardboard box, and paper are all great. Add some sticky tape, scissors, stickers, pencils or crayons and see what the kids can create. Dinosaur feet made from empty tissue boxes? A rocket ship from a cardboard box? The possibilities are endless!
8. Dress up
Use costumes, sunglasses, hats, whatever you have on hand. When our eldest was little, she loved anything to do with detectives and crooks. She often popped on a pair of dark glasses, and a coat that was far too big for her, and suddenly she was a Detective. She’d then ‘interview’ unsuspecting visitors regarding the whereabouts of missing toys. You don’t need expensive costumes. Kids are great at being creative with whatever you have available. You could also set up some books to create a library, or line up some items from your pantry (e.g. tinned food and packets of pasta) to set up a shop. Let the kids come up with the ideas.
9. Read
Grab a stack of the kid’s favourite books or head to the library and let them find something new. Snuggle up and read together or let your kids have some time looking through books on their own. Indoors or outdoors, set up some cushions on a blanket, or make a reading nook by throwing a blanket over a couple of chairs.
10. Tinker
Head to the ‘tip shop’ at your local rubbish tip, op shop or your own garage to find something your kids can take apart. Want to find out what’s inside a computer keyboard? Find a discarded one, take it apart and find out. Depending on your child’s age and abilities will determine how much supervision they’ll need. Keep small parts away from littlies and avoid anything that might have leaking batteries. You’ll need to provide a screwdriver or other tool to take the items apart. Old clocks, toys and items with circuit boards can be interesting. Try to reassemble the parts, or make a piece of art with the pieces.
11. Keep a school holiday journal
When our kids were in Kindergarten, the students kept a journal throughout the year. Each week they’d draw a picture of something they did on the weekend and the teacher would help write a caption to go with the picture. We continued this idea during school holidays and used a blank notebook or stapled some blank pages together to create a ‘School Holiday Journal’. Encourage your child to spend a few minutes each day of the holidays writing and/or drawing something they did the previous day. They can decorate the journal however they like. Stickers, pens, crayons or even paint. Don’t feel pressure to do something exciting every day so they have something to write about! ‘Helped make a cake’, or ‘Played trains with little brother’ are perfectly valid.
12. Have a Picnic
Set up a blanket and some cushions for a picnic at a park, in your own backyard or even on the living room floor! Inside or outside, picnics can be a fun way to eat your lunch, or set up the teddy’s for a pretend picnic.
13. Get out and about
There are usually lots of free activities run by various organisations during school holidays. Lots of screen free play ideas and activities are posted on Local Council websites. Look up activities in your local community, visit a library or museum in your own town, or take a little road trip by bus or car if you want to go further afield.
14. Share a hobby
Whether you like to garden, restore cars, bake, or go fishing, kids enjoy spending time with their grown ups and it’s fun for us grown ups to share a skill with our kids. When our daughter was five, I made her a skirt and she wanted to try sewing one for her toy bunny. We set aside some time and I let her have a try of making a very basic skirt. I showed her what to do at each step, she gave it a go and I stepped in to help as needed. She was so proud to show everyone the little skirt she’d made. It was amazing to see how much of the process she was able to do on her own, once given the opportunity. Set aside some time to share a hobby or something you enjoy doing, and teach your kids a new skill!
15. Dance party
Crank up the music and dance it off with your kids. Take turns busting a few moves each in a ‘dance off’ competition, or let the kids spend hours choreographing their own dance routine to perform for the rest of the family. There are few things more hilarious to a kid than seeing their parent’s dance moves.
16. Search for nature treasures
Head to the beach, park, forest, or even your own backyard in search of treasure. Shells, sticks, leaves, rocks, or anything that takes your child’s interest. Bring some of the treasures home to put on display. If you’d prefer to leave the items where you find them, take a photo.
17. Try out a new park or playground
Is there a park or playground in your local area that you’ve never been to before? Now’s a great time to check it out.
18. Set up (or renovate) a fairy garden
Using items you already own, set up a fairy garden to attract fairies to your garden. Shells; rocks; an old pot turned on it’s side to act as a shelter for the fairies; a small container to use as a vase for cut flowers or a small pot plant; even plastic dinosaurs. Whatever your kids think fairies might like. This is a lovely exercise in creativity for kids and can spark some imaginative story telling fun too. I found this video which gives you some great ideas to get started. Already have a fairy garden? Now might be a good chance to mix things up and ‘renovate’ your current set up.
19. Invite a friend over
Invite a friend over for a play date at your house, or arrange to meet up in a playground or park. Keeping in contact with old friends can be difficult during the busy school term. School holidays are a great excuse to get together, or invite a new friend from school along, that your child would like to get to know better.
20. Distraction free family time
Go for a walk, read together, play a board game, do a jigsaw puzzle, stay home, or go somewhere. Where you go and what you do can be the parent’s choice, kid’s choice, or put it to a vote! Turn off phones and other devices and just enjoy each other’s company.
There you go! Twenty screen free play ideas for the school holidays, or anytime throughout the year. Try a few or challenge yourselves to try them all!
Family Creative Challenge:
Use our FREE printable to encourage your kids to enjoy some ‘old school’, screen free play ideas these school holidays. Tick them off as you go, or cut out each idea along the lines, fold, and place in a jar. Give the jar a shake. Then let your kids pull out an idea at random each day.
What are your family’s favourite screen free play ideas? Make some time these school holidays to enjoy them together.