This post is sponsored by Paper & Packaging – How Life Unfolds ®All opinions are our own.
It’s the home stretch until the start of the new school year and for our girls the school year starts in just two weeks! While it’s been a long summer we’ve also had a great time. Our girls have had a few cases of the “I’m soooo bored!” and “I have nothing to do!” so this week I challenged them to come up with some kids craft ideas with paper and packaging.
This summer the one thing I was hoping to avoid was our girls spending so much time with their devices. Sure we enjoy technology like most families but we also really wanted to inspire our girls to think outside of the box and spend some time being creative. Here are some simple ways I’m cutting back on screen time in our household this summer.
3 Simple Ideas To Cut Screen Time For Your Kids This Summer
- Get Outside– I like to challenge my kids to get outside. Give them buckets and squirt guns, or even some pots and plates to make mud pies. I like to challenge them to get outside and get dirty with their hands. There are so many fun things kids can come up with, let them be bored and come up with their own ideas.
- Set A Time Limit For Screens– After a long day of playing outside or coming up with a fun craft I do allow our girls to enjoy some quiet screen time. Set a timer and stick to the time limits, use it as a reward for good behavior or a simple way to wind down while we wait for dinner. Setting healthy limits is simple and allows kids to create healthy habits with technology.
- Get Creative With Things You Have Around The House– One thing about our girls – if you give them supplies they can just let their imaginations go wild. Recently our girls got a new hamster so they were inspired to create something fun that their hamster would enjoy. So they had a blast using paper and packaging they found around our house to create a fun castle for their hamster.
Our girls had so much fun using paper and packaging products to create their own fun. I was honestly shocked at how many days they spent creating their very own hamster castle for their new hamster to play in. They designed areas for the hamster to crawl in and out of and had such a great time getting creative with their hands. I like encouraging them to have fun with paper and packaging because it’s so easy to create something simple and unique out of everyday materials like toilet paper rolls and paper cups.
In the end they made a really great castle for their hamster that they are super proud of and they keep adding to it, so the fun continues!
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What are some simple ways you encourage your kids to be creative?
I love this! My daughter would make this in a heartbeat. She loves creating crafts out of literally everything.
These are really some cool ideas. It is so important that kids try to be creative and problem solve. They do not have to look at a screen to find satisfaction out of things.
Crafts are a great way to use paper and packaging you already have at home. My son is now a teen so it’s hard to get him away from his phone.
We have been doing a lot of crafting lately to stay away from screens. My 8 yr old and I were just making fairy garden doors tonight.
A time limit on screens is needed for us. I need to get better at enforcing it!
I have been getting a lot of boxes lately so I should be able to give them some projects to make. Great idea.
Aww, we always wanted a hamster! I just feel like my kids would somehow lose it in the house!!
I love it! Any time I can get the kids to do something other than look at a screen, I consider it a parenting win. Thanks for these ideas.