Summer Screen Time
If your kids are anything like mine, they want screens ever waking minute. These days espacially with lack of access to friends my kids are staying connected through videos. Want an idea on how to limite screen time?
Screen Time Rules Tool
As a mom of three I get how hard it can be to keep screen time to what feels resonable. We are living in strange times at the moment where our kids can’t be with other peers. As adults we’re working from home, trying to juggle our kids needs and that annoying bing, bing of incoming emails. This can, at least my house, lead to kids on screens more then I like admit.
Over the last few months of remote learning and working it has tough. I knew the summer was going to be no different with regards to that. To try and support my kids I created a Screen Times Rule tool.
Summer Screen Time Rule
It’s a really simple little tool that makes it easier for me and my kids to know what the expectations are.
The first five items are easy. These are pieces they do everyday. I put those first so they’d be achivable. But what about the next 5 items?
Here are some ideas.
____ minutes of reading
Here you can customize how many minutes of reading your child needs to do. For example my child in Grade 5 needs to do 45 minutes of reading. He chooses his book, and then sits and reads for a bit.
Our son in Grade 3 has to do 30 minutes of reading, and because he struggling with reading he has to read with an adult. He gets to choose who to read with.
_____ minutes of writing
Both our school aged kids are struggling with writing, on all levels, from getting ideas to the machanics of writing. I set about 10 to 15 minutes here, this is not an activity they enjoy so making it long benfits no one.
So each day with my kids we work on the manchanics. One son is working on cursive writing with his OT and does that “homework” while my other son is just working on effective printing skills.
Play outside for 30 minutes
This one is easy. If we’re in the city, it’s a bike ride, a walk, or sometime out in the backyard.
If we are at the cottage then it’s 30 minutes outside in woods, swimming or something else outside.
Make/Build something creative
It’s so important for kids to be creative, to explore their potential. We start by giving them some examples of what they might do, and soon they are doing it themselves.
We give them ideas such as building with LEGO, drawing, painting. Some other ideas are makings with Playdough or if you they plan an instrument create a piece of music. This is just away to keep their brains moving!
This taks usally lasts between 45 and 30 minutes.
Help someone in the family or neighbourhood
In our house these tasks include vaccuming, helping with laundry or yard work. Over the past few weeks we’ve been seeing our neighbours, outside only, and so the kids have been helping with water their gardens or mowing the lawn.
This part is just ment to be a simple little thing they can do be helpful. We keep this task to about 30 minutes.
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It doesn’t have to take too long!
These tasks altogether don’t take long. If you add up the time it’s about 2 and half hours in all. Once they complete the tasks, we limit the time on screens to an agreed upon time in our house. We decided that for us two blocks of one hour in the day works best. You decide what works best.
I hope this list of taks will help you in keep a routin going for your house and keep the discussion positive about how helping others can gain rewards.
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