Screen-Free Fun: 80 amazing activities from sock sliding to raindrop racing

by The School of Life, Alain de Botton (Editor)

Overview

A collection of 80 imaginative games and activities designed to engage and entertain without a screen.

Whether we’re big or small, it can be hard to get away from our screens. Most children spend between five and seven hours a day looking at some form of screen – and most grown-ups spend twice as much time. Screens promise endless entertainment, but the more time we spend with them, the more we lose sight of all that is strange, fascinating, and delightful in the world around us. Even when we’re stuck indoors, there are infinite possibilities for banishing boredom and having fun so long as we use our imagination. All we need are a few helpful suggestions....

Screen-Free Fun contains 80 of the weirdest and most wonderful activities children can do at home, all without using a screen. Rather than scrolling or tapping, you’ll be invited to draw, make, write, invent, dress up, hide, seek, and discover. You can paint like Picasso or meditate like Buddha; become an indoor entomologist or a home Olympian; make up a new language or a mythical creature; and even find the fun in some household chores.

Inventive and irreverent, this book is the perfect companion for humdrum days and wet weekends. It is a compendium of the world’s strangest, silliest and most stimulating activities.

• DISCONNECT from tech by connecting to children’s natural curiosity and creativity.
• 80 UNIQUE ACTIVITIES inspires creativity and curiosity.
• EASY you already have the materials around the house.
• ENTERTAINING inventive activities that keep kids entertained without a screen.
• EDUCATIONAL FUN encourages children’s natural curiosity through learning new facts and practicing new skills.
• GIFT eye-catching, colorful design.
• AGES 8 AND UP activities the whole family will enjoy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781912891573
Publisher:	The School of Life
Publication date:	09/21/2021
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 5.50(h) x (d)
Lexile:	890L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 14 Years

About the Author

The School of Life is a global organization helping people lead more fulfilled lives. Through our range of books, gifts and stationery we aim to prompt more thoughtful natures and help everyone to find fulfillment.

The School of Life is a resource for exploring self-knowledge, relationships, work, socializing, finding calm, and enjoying culture through content, community, and conversation. You can find us online, in stores and in welcoming spaces around the world offering classes, events, and one-to-one therapy sessions.

The School of Life is a rapidly growing global brand, with over 7 million YouTube subscribers, 389,000 Facebook followers, 174,000 Instagram followers and 166,000 Twitter followers.

The School of Life Press brings together the thinking and ideas of the School of Life creative team under the direction of series editor, Alain de Botton. Their books share a coherent, curated message that speaks with one voice: calm, reassuring, and sane.

Read an Excerpt

Paint Like Picasso

Pablo Picasso was a famous artist from Spain. He didn’t try to paint things exactly as they looked in real life (he found this quite boring). Instead, he liked to experiment by painting them in as many different ways he could think of.

 
Pick a person or object – maybe one of your parents or siblings, or a piece of furniture in your room. Try to think of different ways you can draw them/it.

• Can you draw them/it using only one colour?
• Can your draw them/it out of shapes (like cubes, circles or triangles)?
• Can you draw them in the weirdest way you can think of?

• Bottle Instrument
• Musical instruments are often very tempting to play with. They’re also very expensive (and harder to use than they look), which means people are always telling you not to touch them. But luckily, you can make music even if you don’t have a guitar or a cello to hand.
• Find some empty bottles (the more you have the better). Fill them with water to differing levels (mostly full, quite full, halfway full, quite empty, mostly empty) and arrange them in order.
  You can now make different notes by tapping each bottle with a spoon or blowing over the tops of them.
  See if you can play a song someone else can recognise. If things are going well, start a water bottle band. Find yourself a good name.
  If things are going really well, fill bottles with different sorts of liquid. What happens to the sound when you fill a bottle with milk, or creamy soup? (Make sure you ask an adult before using a different liquid – and don’t drink any afterwards!) 
• Your Own Orchard
  
  
• If you think about it, it’s incredible that such large things in nature – like trees – start their lives as such small objects – like seeds. 
• The next time you have an apple, instead of throwing the core away, split it open and take out the apple seeds. Leave them to dry on a paper towel for a day or so.
• Find a small pot and fill it with soil (you could try using any soil, but special seed-starting soil works best). Make a few small holes in the soil with your little finger and drop one seed into each hole, covering the top with more soil.
• Keep the pot somewhere warm and sunny, watering them every couple of days. Not every seed will grow into a tree, but with any luck, within a month or two, you should be able to see shoots beginning to grow. Eventually you’ll need to replant them outside so they can grow into trees. Make sure you ask your parents before doing so!

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Indoor Entomology
• Knight-in-Dining-Armour
• Window Stakeout
• Still Life
• Impress Your Parents
• Rude Words
• Poo Eulogy
• Feckless Necklace
• Not-So-Super Heroes
• Interview Your Grandmother
• Paint Like Picasso
• Newstaches
• My Utopia
• Racing Raindrops
• Bottle Instrument
• Meditation
• Good News
• Change Your View
• Cut-Up Technique
• Cloud Watching
• Outdoor Artworks
• Your Own Orchard
• Leaf Pressing
• Cleaning Pioneer
• Unique Perspectives
• Bored to Death
• Combining Flavours
• Life Predictions
• Memory Capsule
• Surprising Enterprise
• The Story of an Object
• Become an Animal
• Rude Wordsearch
• Body Knowledge
• Penny Finders
• Steering Blind
• New Gods
• Stand and Deliver
• Dressing Up, Up and Up
• Drawpreciation
• Recipe for Disaster
• Grue-seum
• Invent a Language
• New Words
• Precious Suitcase
• Back to Front
• My Chimera
• Concocting Constellations
• Feed the Birds
• Egg Family
• Intriguing Openers
• Poememory
• Receipt Top Trumps
• Voluminous Vocabulary
• Taste Tester
• Vow of Silence
• A More Exciting Diary
• Hallway Bowling
• Sock Sliding
• Carl or Christmas?
• Filthy Tongues
• Spot the Difference in the Snow
• Summing it Up
• Donald’s Squiggle Game
• Philosophical Questions
• Restained Glass Windows
• Philosopher’s Wordsearch
• The Enthusiastic Servant Game
• Make Yourself Tiny Game
• A Conversation Menu
• The Ultimate Apology
• The Book of Idiots
• Home Olympics
• Fill in the Blanks
• Count Your Blessings
• Haunt Your Own House
• Putting Things in Order
• Design Your Own Pirate Flag
• Maps of Imaginary Places
• Defeat the Pen or Pencil