There’s some belief that productive screen time for kids means boring time for kids – as if productive and boring are besties and hang out together all the time. The truth is, productive and boring aren’t even friends because it is near impossible to be productive – engaged, intrigued, absorbing, questioning – if you’re bored!
It is totally understandable why we tend to link productive with boring though. For most of us, we thought the productive part of school was the boring part. Who doesn’t remember counting down the minutes and seconds until recess started? Recess was fun then and now and the part kids long for and can’t wait for. Let’s have a mind blown moment. Any educator will tell you that recess is actually as productive and critical as any other lesson time. Mind blown? Not so much when you think of all the life skills kids learn during recess.
Lessons from Recess
Let’s take what makes recess so desirable for kids – even though it is productive – and use those tips to guide us to make screen time productive and unboring.
The first thing to recognize is that it’s not the topic that makes something boring – it’s the delivery. Any learning goal can be ‘unboringed’. Our wish as parents and teachers is to find unboring ways to help kids learn. Enter technology, multi-media and the internet.
With sound effects, fascinating characters, storylines, interactivity and gamification even watching paint dry can become thrilling. Technology definitely makes it easier to unboring learning, but it is not a magic wand. It takes some effort to put together productive digital journey’s that kids actually want to follow. Lucky for us, we can look to recess for how to help us to make screen time productive.
Ensure Variety in Screen Time Activities
No one plays the exact same game at recess forever. Even favorites eventually fall out of favor and some new twist is required. When you’re looking for productive content for screen time, it can’t be one type of thing all the time. Mix up games, videos, music, tutorials, worksheets and anything else you can think of. Fortunately, the internet is pretty limitless.
Give Kids ‘free Choice’
Recess is one of the few times in a child’s day when they clearly have choice. In reality, it is not truly free choice because common sense constraints, like no running across the street, no shoving other kids, are in place. But kids have options of who to play with, what game to play, who is ‘it’ and who is catching. These options are liberating. Give kids ‘free choice’ at times in their screen time even if it is allowing them to choose from just 2 options.
Allow Time for Pure Silliness
Recess is a time kids can let go of some of the comportment required in class. For more productive screen time, include pure silliness in each digital journey you want your child to follow. Delight them with some time for their favorite game, or other useless activity that they love for some reason. Silliness can also be a reward for pushing through some of the more serious stuff you want them to do. At any age, it is a wonderful feeling to be able to ‘let loose’.
Don’t Announce to Kids that They Are Learning
Part of the fun of recess is thinking that you’ve escaped from ‘learning time’. There is a reason vegetables are blended in with fruit juice for kids to get their veges. Kids will learn even if they don’t know they are learning. Games and comedy in particular are great tools. Once the learning outcome is achieved, who cares what they call it!
Include Off Screen Activities in Their Screen Time
One reason recess is so awesome is that it is a break from the norm. So though it may seem counterintuitive, one of the ways to make screen time more productive is to include activities that make kids step away from the screen! Schedule activities that set up scavenger hunts where they need to look for things around the house, tasks them with activities like building a fort or playing pillow tag or tasks them to tell a riddle to someone. The off screen time helps to spice up the on screen.
Animals Know Productive Doesn’t Mean Boring
It seems like the memo that productive doesn’t have to be boring reached the animal kingdom before it reached us humans. You will never see lion cubs sitting behind little lion cub desks learning the principles of hunting. They learn everything they need through play – endless recess. So the next time you’re thinking about what to schedule for screen time for your kids, think like a lion. Make it like recess.
