10 day screen detox

When I started the screen detox, I only intended doing a few days, just to get us out of that routine, and honestly, to prove to myself that I wasn't relying on it too much, but I noticed changes in both boys from day 1 and decided to keep it up for a while before reintroducing movie time. 

Over the first few days, Bear asked a few times if he could have a movie on, but easily accepted the answer no, and moved on. I've seen much more imaginative play in both of them and the highlight has definitely been seeing them play together. Granted that looks a lot like The Cub following Bear around and copying him, but it's beautiful to see them getting along after quite a rough patch of them always falling out and upsetting one another.

We have played so many games together, done lots of intentional learning which Bear seems to be more receptive to in a morning than in an afternoon so we've been trying to get that in before lunch. The Cub has started taking part in our learning time and has been looking at shapes and colours. He has his own resources including a couple of easy wipe-clean activity books that were bought just for him. He is very young for this kind of sit-down learning, but he wants to be involved so I've created activities to aid his development so he can join in when he wants to.

Their outside playtime has included a lot of garden time at the end of last week
when we saw some winter sunshine as we've had stuff going on at or around the house that's kept us from going too far, and even that has been imaginative play with sticks, pebbles and an old drain pipe as a slide.

I've picked up a different work-out activity for myself this last week too which both boys have wanted to get involved in, so that's something else we've done together, and by tea time, at what would have been movie time, we've been doing activities at the kitchen table which has put them in the same room as me while I'm prepping tea. They've done colouring, stickers and other activity books, of which I have a whole box full, and they've been chatty, instead of in another room staring at a screen.

I definitely want to keep screen time lower than before as we move forward, and plan to let them have movie time a few times a week, however, I'm going to look at having it earlier in the day, as one of the benefits I've seen in Bear is that he is falling asleep easier and earlier than before when he used to lay in bed for hours before actually falling asleep.

All in all, the benefits far outweigh the ease of having them in front of the TV and I've loved watching them entertain themselves in other ways.

What other activities do you do instead of watching TV?

Mama Bear x