Looking to limit your children's screen time?
Indoor games or outdoor physical activities, creative workshops or puzzle games, building or imitation games... there's no shortage of screen-free activities to keep children occupied.
Bloon offers 25 screen-free game ideas for all ages that stimulate their imagination, independence, and desire to move.
Why is it essential to offer screen-free games to your children?
Fighting sedentary lifestyles at home
The WHO (World Health Organization) recommends that children aged 5 to 17 engage in 60 minutes of daily physical activity.
However, with the omnipresence of digital technologies in our daily lives, children's screen time continues to increase. The Ministry of Health mentions an average of 4 hours of daily use for 6-17 year olds.
Yet, the immobility that accompanies intensive screen use is harmful to the physical and mental health of young people: increased risk of obesity, decreased cardiovascular capacity, sleep disorders, eye strain, social isolation, etc.
Given this phenomenon, overexposure to screens for children and adolescents has become a public health issue. Associations, public authorities, and health professionals are alerting parents to the need to combat excessive screen consumption and the sedentary lifestyle associated with it.
Offering screen-free activities to children is therefore one of the good habits to adopt to ensure the balance and well-being of young people.
Develop imagination and free movement
Do you feel guilty as soon as your child runs around the house? However, free play and boredom are an integral part of their development. They even encourage inventiveness to find an occupation.
Inventing stories, playing with anything that comes to hand, or experimenting with their environment: that's what develops their imagination and free movement.
So there's no need to constantly stimulate children; on the contrary, it's sometimes good to be bored.
Indoor screen-free activities for 3-7 year olds: moving and exploring despite the rain
1. Create a motor skills course in the living room
Rainy days can be a real pain when children are cooped up indoors. However, there are a multitude ofscreen-free activities to do when it rains.
The home motor skills course is the ideal game to help children expend their energy. This game mobilizes agility, coordination, balance, and the child's proprioception.
Use cushions, chairs, tables, and other furniture and accessories available to design this course.
Children can then crawl under the table, hop on one foot, cross an imaginary bridge, and let their imaginations run wild. Some are pirates on a ship, while others avoid volcano lava (the floor) by seeking refuge up high.
2. Balance and proprioception games with a Bloon
Balance games are very exhilarating for young children.
Bloon ball chairs offer dynamic seating, particularly useful for getting the body moving again and improving posture when sitting for long periods in a prolonged sitting position.
As part of play, the ball chair can become a fun accessory on which to learn to maintain balance.
Challenge your child by suggesting they try different positions on the ball: sitting or lying down, without their feet... For example, sitting on the ball chair with their feet raised, the child must hold their balance for as long as possible.
The Bloon Active Seat™, suitable for children aged 8 to 15 (130 to 150 cm) with its 45 cm diameter, is an excellent way to incorporate more movement into a child's daily life and playfully work on their balance and proprioception.
3. Timeless classics: forts and treasure hunts
A fort in the living room? Haven't thought of it yet? Yet, a few sheets, cushions, blankets, and chairs are enough to build an impregnable fortress. Unless it's a boat or a spaceship?
A fort built between two chairs, with the drying rack or under the table, can stimulate children's imaginations. To incorporate more movement, simply hide a few objects in the room, and the treasure hunt can begin.
4. The conductor game or musical statues
The conductor game is an excellent way to express creativity with your body. The principle is simple: to music of your choice, the designated conductor invents movements that others must reproduce identically.
Musical statues is another music game very popular with children. It involves dancing to music, then freezing like a statue when the music stops. Whoever moves loses.
These activities allow children to have fun without screens, while mobilizing coordination, imitation, observation and listening skills, as well as movement control.
5. Cooking as a family: mathematics and fine motor skills
A moment of sharing par excellence, cooking as a family is one of the best screen-free activities to do at home.
From reading a recipe, weighing ingredients, kneading dough, decorating the final preparation... Cooking mobilizes all the senses and offers a very enriching experience for children.
It allows for the development of fine motor skills in younger children, working with proportion concepts, and encouraging reading for older children.
Creative activities to occupy and stimulate little ones
6. Clean painting
Motor skill development is essential for toddlers who need to explore their bodies and their environment. To let your child express their creative talent without turning your house into an artist's studio, organize a clean painting session.
Several options are available to allow babies to discover painting. You can apply touches of gouache in a flattened airtight plastic bag. The child can then spread, move, and mix the colors as they wish.
If space permits, you can use sheets of paper, taped to the floor, and place a few drops of paint on them before attaching a transparent plastic sheet. Here again, the child, even on all fours, will be able to explore their senses, work on their hand-eye coordination, and their fine motor skills.
7. Sensory bins
Toddlers love transferring. These activities are even very often carried out in nurseries and other places where babies are cared for.
In sensory bins, place semolina, rice, dried beans, and other such foods so that the child can touch and experience different sensations on their little fingers. Give them cups so they can transfer the items from one bin to another.
8. Cardboard masks
Take advantage of a rainy afternoon to turn off the screens and start a cardboard mask-making workshop.
Children can choose the character or animal they want. Cardboard, elastic, a few felt-tip pens or paint are enough to become Spider-Man or the Lion King.
With this activity, little ones can develop their graphic abilities and fine motor skills, before fully embodying their character.
9. Free drawing
Free drawing is an essential activity in a child's learning process. As soon as they can hold a pencil, they are able to express their emotions and let their imagination run wild through drawing.
In addition to being relaxing, drawing is very rewarding when practiced regularly. The more a child is used to drawing, the more they will see their progress. Now you know what you have to do: reduce children's screen time in favor of free drawing.
10. More traditional craft activities
No need to look far to keep children away from screens. Sometimes, traditional activities are enough to entertain them for a long time.
Playdough, cutting, coloring, gluing, and stickers... always have great success with little ones. In addition to expressing their creativity, these manual activities awaken their fine motor skills and strengthen the precision of their movements.
Occupying 8-12 year olds and teenagers away from smartphones indoors
11. Timed construction challenges
Legos, Kapla, or building blocks... launch a timed challenge to create a specific work: the tallest tower, a fortified castle, an indestructible bridge...
The challenge given within a time limit stimulates children's motivation, who would almost forget the existence of screens at home.
12. Customizing a desk or everyday objects
All children have this instinct to personalize their belongings. If you're short on screen-free indoor activity ideas, suggest to your pre-teen that they decorate their desk or a particular object (jewelry box, pencil holder, photo frame, mirror...) to their liking.
In addition to asserting their identity, your child will be happy to decorate their room with a personal touch.
13. Creating a "mood board" or a memory box
Teenagers love to reminisce about good times spent with family or friends. To keep your child busy without a screen for an afternoon, suggest they gather photos, concert tickets, drawings, small notes, or other favorite items in a memory box. This offers them a real treasure to keep.
The most creative will enjoy making a "mood board" on a theme that inspires them: a trip, a sport, an artist... This personalized collage depicts their emotions and their current passion in an aesthetic way.
14. Board games revisited in "life-size"
Board games offer an opportunity to spend time with family and play without screens.
To limit the time spent sitting, you can modify the rules and create a life-size game to play on the floor. For example, each player must jump to move forward one square in the game of goose.
This activity for children at home is ideal for adding movement to the game and combating a sedentary lifestyle.
15. Create a comic strip
Looking for screen-free activities for the holidays? What if your child created a comic strip? This is enough to keep them busy for a few days away from digital technologies. First, they need to create a character, then imagine a story, then draw this fiction and invent the dialogues.
By combining text and drawing, comic strips are an excellent exercise for developing children's narrative and graphic skills.
"Quiet time": 3 screen-free activities for children before bedtime
16. Listen to podcasts or audio stories
It's important to encourage calm activities before bedtime. The blue light emitted by screens and scrolling images delay children's sleep.
So, instead of turning on the TV in the evening, let them listen to audio stories.
Without harmful blue light for sleep, story boxes like Lunii or podcasts for children are excellent for imagination and bring a return to calm before sleeping.
17. Children's yoga and playful stretches
Yoga is a calming discipline that is worth practicing at any age. Introduce different poses by imitating animals: the stretching cat, the jumping frog…
Perfect for releasing tension before falling asleep, yoga offers quiet time for children before bedtime and promotes quality sleep.
18. Active reading
Bedtime stories offer a calm and special family moment, which should not be replaced by screens.
Listening to a story told by parents stimulates children's imagination and helps develop language.
To extend interaction, don't hesitate to make the child more active: ask them to guess the rest of the story or imagine a different ending.
Outdoor activities for children: disconnect to reconnect with nature
19. Ball games and outdoor sports
The earlier children learn to play outside, the more they will enjoy screen-free outdoor activities. With outdoor sports and ball games, you have many possibilities to break away from a sedentary lifestyle while having fun.
Badminton, tennis, football, volleyball, dodgeball, tag… are all ball and racket games that are easy to play, anywhere and at any age.
As for outdoor sports (cycling, horse riding, climbing, tree climbing…), they add a bit of nature and adventure to sports sessions.
20. Treasure hunt or mini-Olympics
Looking for screen-free game ideas to help your child burn off energy outdoors?
Highly stimulating, the mini-Olympics offer the opportunity to practice several sports: running, ball throwing, obstacle courses, jumping… and can be easily organized in the garden.
As for the timeless treasure hunt, searching for clues keeps children running for hours without them even realizing it.
21. Family hike
A real breath of fresh air, good for body and mind, hiking is beneficial at any age.
To motivate younger children, make this outing a real exploration mission. Give them challenges: find a heart-shaped stone or leaf, look for three different insects, memorize five red things…
22. Impromptu picnic (even in the garden grass)
Since screens are not recommended during meals, why not improvise an outdoor picnic? In a park, in a forest, by a lake or simply in the garden, a picnic transforms a simple meal into a real adventure.
23. Gardening on the balcony or in the garden
Getting hands dirty, observing insects, sowing seeds, planting young shoots, then harvesting fruits and vegetables are concrete and sensory activities.
Through gardening, children can learn about the cycle of nature, observe living things, and awaken all their senses.
24. Combine nature and creativity
Walks in the forest offer the opportunity to study the different forms that nature takes by collecting leaves, flowers, twigs, moss, stones, empty snail shells…
With this collection, suggest that children create ephemeral works on the ground or make a herbarium once they get home.
Painting on pebbles and shells is an alternative that also allows children to express all their talent.
25. Build an insect hotel or a birdhouse
DIY workshops are very rewarding experiences for children. In addition to building something with their hands, they make themselves useful to nature.
When building an insect hotel or a birdhouse, the child applies mathematical concepts (measurements), manipulates and assembles. At the end of the project, they can observe the wildlife in their new habitat.
FAQ - How to establish new screen-free habits at home?
Should screens be completely banned?
No, it is difficult to completely ban screens at home. However, the WHO recommends regulating usage according to children's age. The objective is to prioritize activities that promote development and combat a sedentary lifestyle.
How much screen time by age?
Official recommendations advocate screen use adapted to age, but do not indicate a limited duration. For the youngest, screen use should be prohibited before 3 years old and exceptional before 6 years old. Thereafter, the child must learn to manage their digital usage.
How to occupy a child without a screen when it's raining?
Rainy days offer many possibilities for activities to do at home: board games, building blocks, forts, motor skills courses, manual or creative workshops, cooking…
What screen-free activities for a 4-year-old?
At 4 years old, children need simple and short activities that allow them to use their senses and discover their environment through puzzles, construction games, coloring, playdough, cooking, or even motor skills courses…
My child gets angry when I turn off the TV or tablet, how should I react?
If turning off or removing the screen leads to tantrums, use tricks to facilitate the transition. Warn your child of your intentions a few minutes before the end and set a visual timer for the remaining screen time.
How to create a movement-friendly space at home?
Evolving in an environment that offers the possibility to move, change position, and vary activities helps to make days less sedentary.
In your child's room, set up a workspace adapted to their age and size (desk, screen, and seat height).
Occasionally, replace their chair with a ball seat to introduce more movement into their daily life and make time spent drawing or doing homework more dynamic.
Conclusion
You now have all the keys to finding among these 25 ideas how to occupy children without screens. It's not about overstimulating them and constantly playing with them, but rather developing their imagination and autonomy.
These screen-free games and activities are essential for their development, both motor, sensory, and linguistic. Free play, drawing, and motor skills courses allow for alternation between quiet moments and physical activities.
It is with this in mind that Bloon ball seats bring movement back into daily life. During homework, reading, or drawing, dynamic seating becomes a solution to limit a sedentary lifestyle.
By encouraging your children's mobility, creativity, and curiosity, you give them every chance to thrive in the best conditions, far beyond screens.