Screen Free Week is Coming!

This used to be called "TV-free Week", but since 2010 the name changed to "Scree-free Week". The idea is to have a week without any screens entertaining us. No TV, video games, movies, computers, itouch, etc... This year, Screen-Free Week is from Monday April 18 to Sunday April 24.

Our family is participating this year. We have all agreed to allow 3 minutes to check our e-mail daily, since our Air Cadets need to check that week's newsletter in this manner. We also don't want to worry about missing any important messages related to work, extra-curricular activities, or homeschool field trips. Three minutes a day is plenty to quickly check new e-mails and take care of them. The rest of the week will be scree-free completely.

This blog will have Book Sharing Monday post automatically published on the Monday (I will write it on the Sunday before). I will be late writing our weekly wrap-up post, it won't be written or posted until the following Monday or Tuesday.

There are so many activities a family can do that doesn't involve a screen. If the weather permits, we are planning on enjoying the outdoors a lot. Biking, walking, planning and working on our garden, chalking on our driveway, etc.. Inside, we have lots of things we enjoy doing together or seperately as well: painting, reading, playing board games or cards, playing with dolls, legos, and more. It will also be a regular school week for us.

You can find many ideas for scree-free activities by googling. Here are a few links I found interesting:

Kids' Activities for Screen-Free Week

Resources to Inspire Your Screen-Free Week (great book list!)

Get Ready for Screen-Free Week: 30 Great Ideas and Printables

Ideas that I came across that inspired me (in no particular order or organization!):

• start a vegetable, herb, or wildflower garden
• play with marbles
• set up a basket of drawing supplies and paper and rotate each day (1 day markers+thick paper, next watercolour+paint paper cut in an interesting shape, crayon+colouring pages)
• start a book reading marathon
• sort through toys and donate unwanted ones 
• start a large puzzle together
• start an Earth Day project
• sew something together 
• make friendship bracelets
• play hide and seek (still one of my kids' favourites, especially at night!)
• go bowling
• cook together

There are so many ideas! Let me know if you are participating in Screen Free Week too by leaving a comment to this post and share some of your ideas for activities too!