Nontech Summer Activities For Kids of All Ages
Help your family thrive this summer—without screens
This summer, trade Fortnite and TikTok for real-life fun.
Many of us have fond memories of our own childhood summers: building forts in the woods, playing pick-up games of Wiffle ball, and biking around the neighborhood until it got dark.
But for many kids today, this isn’t what summer looks like. For many kids, summer is an indoor, solitary time, filled with online tutoring, virtual camps, tablet time, and, of course, video games.
While this may feel normal in today’s world, it isn’t healthy. Our kids need more time outside and more time with friends and family. They need a real summer, a low-tech summer. And you can give it to them.
Here are some nontech summer activities you can do with children of any age.
Nontech Summer Activities for a ScreenStrong Summer
1. Give You Kids (Fun) Summer Chores, or Let Teens Get A Job
When the school year is filled with early morning classes and afternoon homework, chores feel more like, well, doing chores. But with a more relaxed schedule in the summer, chores and accomplishing larger projects around the house can feel rewarding. They not only give your family the chance to work hard together and see progress, but studies have actually shown that household chores during childhood are one of the top predictors of lifetime success! They teach life skills, build competence and confidence, and encourage strong family connections.
Sit down with your kids and make a list of family projects you’d like to tackle together. Some ideas to get you started: planting a garden, deep cleaning and redecorating the kids’ bedrooms, detailing the family car, and building a fire pit. When project time comes around, make it fun by putting on some happy music and taking a break for cookies and lemonade.
If your children are teenagers, encourage them to get a job at a local business, like a restaurant or grocery store, or even start their own lawn care, pet sitting, or tutoring business.
2. Promote Reading for Pleasure
Books are one of the first things to go when your child enters the screen world. But while fewer and fewer children are reading for pleasure, it continues to be one of the biggest edges you can give your kids in life.
If you want to reignite your children’s love for reading, you need to first look at their book collection and make sure it is updated with age-appropriate material. If you need help finding new material, ask your local children’s librarian. And if you don’t have a library card and visit the library often, get started!
Like doing chores, reading can become a fun, shared activity. Read together as a family on a regular basis. You can all snuggle up under blankets together and eat popcorn as you read your separate books. Or you can read aloud as a group, taking turns as the reader.
3. Make Time for Unstructured Play
With all the time spent indoors and online, chances are that your kids (and you) need to reboot their play skills. And while the concept of “play” may feel frivolous, it’s seriously important.
In their book Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, Stuart M. Brown, MD, and Christopher Vaughan explain that play is essential to health for adults, kids, and even animals. It promotes stress relief, innovation, social skills, and creativity. Many of these benefits come from unstructured play (e.g., time in the backyard) as opposed to structured play (e.g., team sports).
For young kids, real play begins when you shoo your kids out the back door with a snack and a water bottle. For kids who may not be used to having a lot of unstructured play time, prepare the backyard before you let them out. Set up a Slip ’N-Slide, water balloons, sprinklers, or a badminton set. Refresh the sidewalk chalk, put air in the bike tires, or get a driveway hoop for basketball.
For tweens and teens, invite friends over, buy simple sports gear like a football or Frisbee, and never underestimate the power of some fully loaded water guns. You can also encourage social time outdoors by playing music outside or lighting up the fire pit at night.
4. Break Out the Art Supplies
One subject that has taken a big hit in schools in recent years is art— so offer your child the chance to explore their artistic side in the summer.
While some art skills can be learned online through instructional videos, many of these involve copying someone else’s work. Encourage your child to hone their own creativity through rock painting, jewelry making, scrapbooking, or cookie and cake decorating. Remember, every child is an artist. You just need to find the art that speaks to your child’s interests.
As with everything we’ve been discussing, there is strength in numbers, so consider hosting a backyard art camp for your neighborhood. And while the word “camp” may feel intimidating, we promise it’s easier than you think. Simply invite friends over for the day, have them pack a sack lunch, and provide a few supplies. Plan two or three projects and wrap it up with some water sports to cool things down. The mess stays outside, and your kids will enjoy the benefits of art and socialization—it’s a win-win!
5. Find Ways to Enjoy Nature
We could all stand to do a bit of reconnecting with nature, and doing so doesn’t have to involve a grand trip to a national park.
Gardening is a perfect activity for all ages. Digging in the dirt, pulling the weeds, and watching things grow can ignite your child’s sense of wonder and pride, giving them something low stakes to tend to and take care of. And you don’t need a big space, either! A small patch in the backyard, a raised bed, or containers on the back porch will work.
Fishing and camping are also great ways for the family to enjoy nature. Look for local ponds, lakes, and parks that allow camping—these are usually quite affordable! And for newer campers, backyard camping is a great way to get started.
6. Take Music Lessons
Learning to play an instrument not only does wonders for children’s brain development; it also gives them a sense of pride as they see their progress and makes for a creative and fun downtime activity.
Ask your child what instrument she might like to learn, and use the summer months to introduce music lessons. Resist the urge to depend on YouTube; in-person lessons are always preferable.
Music lessons are a gift for all ages that will keep giving for the rest of their lives. For tweens and teens, music can even be a bonding activity as they form garage bands with their friends and blend socialization with music.
Remember that the voice is an instrument, too, and karaoke microphones are a great investment that make for hours of all-family fun!
7. Encourage Exercise & Movement
Our digital culture forces all of us to be too sedentary. But kids especially need to focus on staying active. Exercise is not only healthy for brain development and learning but helps with depression and anxiety, which are often brought on by too much screen time.
You can do family running, walking, or biking challenges, and aim to do them in the morning or early evening when it isn’t too hot. You can also invest in a trampoline, swings, or a membership to a local pool. If your children are teens, get them summer gym memberships so they can try weight lifting or even some exercise classes!
8. Enable Group Hangouts
Summer is the time for casual gatherings, so make your house the hangout spot and gather friends as much as possible. Remember, social media and Facetime chats are not the same as face-to-face gatherings.
If you have started a ScreenStrong Group at your school, don’t stop meeting during the summer.
You can also get groups of families together for board game nights, meet-ups at the local park or pool, the sandlot baseball field, or kayaking. For tweens and teens, get an inexpensive outdoor projector and host dinner-and-a-movie night once a week. Teens really do want to be together in person, and summer is the perfect time to fill their social tanks.
9. Get a Pet
This summer may be the perfect time to get a family pet.
But if you’re not ready to take the plunge, consider volunteering as a family at the local rescue center or fostering some puppies or kittens. Have your kids offer to walk the neighbor’s dog or take care of pets when owners are on vacation to give them a sense of responsibility and get them outdoors and moving!
10. Focus on Family Connection
As parents, we often have grand plans for the summer but fail to make them happen. This summer can be different, especially if you get the kids involved in the planning.
As a family, make a list of nontech summer activities that focus on togetherness. Invite everyone to contribute ideas. These can include things like having a picnic dinner outside a few times a week, camping in the backyard, hosting neighborhood family potluck dinners, and having friends over for card game nights.
You can also institute dinner-and-a-movie nights once a week and keep a 1,000-piece puzzle out in the den. And while vacations are wonderful, schedule a few local day trips, too, to amusement parks, music festivals, and theater performances.
One last note about family vacations
While encouraging teens to hang out in person is important, this year may be a good year to consider having a family-only vacation with no outside friends. Not only will you benefit from the family time, but you will also be able to keep your vacation screen-free. (After all, it’s difficult to control the screen use of other people’s kids.) Just remember to leave your own screens at home!
You can do this. A summer without video games and social media is possible, and we have the resources to help. Join our community for support and start a ScreenStrong book club in your neighborhood or school to meet other families choosing to live without toxic screens.
You can also get connected in our connect Group, try the ScreenStrong 30-Day Reset, and upgrade your teen’s smartphone with a talk/text phone. Just try it for the summer and, who knows, you may never go back!
For more encouragement, check out these ScreenStrong Families podcasts:
Go Game-free And Never Have Bored Kids Again! (#7)
ScreenStrong Teens: Smartphone-Free Childhoods (#198)
Melanie Hempe, BSN, is the founder of ScreenStrong, a nonprofit organization, and the author of the Kid’s Brains and Screens course series for students and parents. She is dedicated to preventing and reversing childhood screen addictions by providing scientific evidence and community for families around the globe. Her educational material is filled with everything she wished she had known before her oldest child suffered from a screen addiction. ScreenStrong has created what every family needs—education and the community—to skip toxic screens through adolescence so teens can reach their full potential. Visit ScreenStrongSolutions.com for educational material and ScreenStrong.org to learn more and join the community that is saving childhood.