35 more screen-alternatives

*****

For our first screen-fast in 2025, we offered up 35 ideas for great activities you and your family can do with your screen-free moments, minutes, hours, and days. As we get set for another fast, we have another opportunity to make a course-correction in our lives when it comes to where our hearts, minds, and eyes are directed. We’re back with 35 more activities, including some ideas from people who did the screen-fast last summer.

But first, let’s start with one of their testimonials on why it is worth taking the screen-fast plunge:

“I somewhat reluctantly signed up for the screen-fast as my wife and kids were participating, but reflecting on it now, I can see God’s hand working through them and the screen-fast.

“I spent more time reading the Bible and additional study material, and more time in prayer and reflection. I was able to think more clearly after the first few days as the cheap distraction of screens was gone. This gave me time and focus to think through issues at work which I’ve been contending with for around a year and come to difficult decisions there that I had perhaps been avoiding. My time was better spent in devotions, exercise, conversation, family activities, and time in God’s creation. I felt much better mentally, physically, and spiritually at the end of the ten days.

“I intend to do this screen-fast again in the future and strongly encourage anyone who has not done it to do so and aim to grow in service of our gracious God.”

What follows are 35 suggestions, gathered from RP readers and staff, for what you can do with all your extra screen-free time!

Make God first

• Bible-in-a-year is easier – “My husband and I also had more time to work on our ‘Bible-in-a-year’ readings in the evenings as well as more time to journal and read some fiction.”
• 
• Devoted devotions – “I started each day with devotions rather than reaching for my phone and therefore skipping devotions didn’t happen anymore.”
• Remembering to pray – “Helped to remind me to pray every time I went to tap an ‘earbud’.”

Break, and bake, bread

• Rediscover dinner – “We had meals at the kitchen table instead of in the living room while watching YouTube.”
• Hold a tasting party – It doesn’t need to be fancy. Kids could find it fun to make and sample 3 different kinds of macaroni with a couple of different ketchups. Or have a soda sampler, using shot glasses, teaching your littles to “clean their palates” before sampling the next.

Twists on reading a good book

• Pay your kids to read what you want – Some kids won’t read, and others only read a certain sort of book. If you’re spending thousands on Christian education, maybe a few hundred could be devoted to upgrading your children’s summer reading by paying them to read the books you really want them reading. Maybe it’s an old classic like Pilgrim’s Progress (but be sure you have a copy with updated English) or a great Christian biography you loved. Would a couple bucks motivate them? Maybe a fiver? This wouldn’t be a great idea long-term – we don’t want them thinking reading is a job – but for the 10 days of the screen-fast maybe it’d be just right.
• All together now – Try reading a picture book together – maybe one by Mo Willems about Piggie and Gerald, but any heavy-on-dialogue book would do. Then assign each family member and friend a character. Give them a few moments to create the character’s voice. Mom or dad can act the part of the narrator, and you are ready for a dramatic performance.
• Library treasure hunt – Pick an animal you want to know more about, and then head to the library to research all about it. Everyone needs to choose their own animal, read up, and present your findings in a few days. Best done with adult oversight, or when your kids are able to see through most nature books’ evolutionary nonsense, and can see God’s fingerprints evident in their new favorite critter.

Love the neighbor next to you

• Only head up in the room – “Quite often if you’re sitting in a waiting room, someone will strike up a conversation with you, because you’re available and willing to talk. You may have an impact on someone else’s day. Smile and give eye contact!”
• Howdy! – Go for a walk and talk, chatting up all the neighbors you meet.
• Paint party – Paint the opening question and answer of the Westminster or Heidelberg Catechisms on your garage door. Then spend extra time outside, with your head up, ready for any conversations that may come.
• Outdoor games night – Hold a games night on your front lawn and invite passersby to join in. Make sure they are simple short games, to make it easiest.

Be contagious

• Show, don’t tell – “Over the days [my family that didn’t join the screen fast] slowly joined me in some of my non-screen pursuits, doing jigsaw puzzles and chatting over cups of tea.” “We had family come for summer holidays, and they willingly partook (kids too)! Fishing and bike rides at 7 am rather than cartoons…win!”
• Start a “What I wouldn’t have seen” journal – Every time a family member sees something they know they wouldn’t have seen if they’d been on a screen, they should write it down in this journal. It may be quite the collection before the screen-fast is done!

Actually fix things

• All-in hour – Your honey-do list is getting long? Pick one hour each day for everyone to just get at whatever needs to be gotten. Dishes piling up? That door squeaking? It’s so much more motivating to work, when no one can shirk.
• One room at a time – Each day, a different room. You’re picking a target, not promising yourself perfection. So pick a room, get help, and get what you can done in a set amount of time. Then tomorrow, move on to the next room whether you’re done this one or not.

Gaming together

• Race remote control cars – “The quality time together was definitely better as we played cards, drove RCs at the park and made homemade cards.”
• Rebound for your bro or sis – “Our whole family did a lot more reading, board game playing, and shooting hoops…. I was impressed to see them doing Sudokus, reading, looking out the window, and playing cards with each other.”

Embrace the boredom

• Be bored – “My 10-year-old said that she found more space to be creative when the computer and TV was off.”
• Tackle a “shower thought” – It’s no wonder so many of us get our best ideas in the shower as there’s nothing else for our brain to do in there but think. Now don’t just think about it; use your extra time to turn an idea into reality.

Enjoy your spouse

• Go on walks – “It helped me reconnect with my wife. Instead of sitting on the couch consuming content in the evenings, we went for more walks and had more time to talk about what was going on.”
• Go to bed at the same time – It can be hard to connect if you’re falling asleep to a device. But if you turn off the distractions, you can tune into your spouse, and vice versa. “My best recommendation for others would be to eliminate phones from your bedroom. Reading my Bible nightly is way more likely to happen when Instagram is more than a click away. That Christian influencer’s advice might be insightful, but God’s Word will not return empty (Is. 55:11).”
• Wash the dishes together – A dishwasher is a lovely thing, but it’s sweet teamwork when a couple divvies up the washing and drying. In our busy lives, this short time right after dinner is still usually open and available, not just to work, but to flirt.

Connect with the kids

• Backyard camping – Pitch the tent, get out the flashlights, and if you can, get some s’mores made. And when it’s time to sleep, have dad or mom read a story, or share a childhood adventure.
• Game-night marathon – Play your kids’ favorite board or card game as many times in a row as they like, even into the wee hours of the night.

More painting

• Untouched canvas – If your house has a big blank wall somewhere, do something about it. With some painter’s tape, line out, and then paint in, a humungous rectangular frame that you and your friends or family are now going to fill in with your own beautiful artistry.
• Try, try again – Get small, inexpensive canvases from the store and paints, and paint your masterpiece. Then, tomorrow, paint over it. Continue until you’ve got something you love.
• Help a widow – Organize a painting party (painting the fence, etc.) for a widow.

Challenges

• Family read-a-thon – Make up your own rules, but here’s something you could try. Mark off a sheet of paper divvying each day in hours and put it on your fridge. Every family member writes down how many (if any) pages they’ve read that hour. The one who gets the most pages in that hour gets a point. Most points in a day gets a small prize. Most points over the 10 days gets to have mom and dad pay for a book of their choosing.
• Wall of gratitude – Every hour you can write down on an index card something you are thankful for. Then tape that card to a wall. You can only do one an hour, and if you miss an hour, you can’t catch up. Each thankful card has to be original – no repeated thanks for your spouse or children, etc., no matter how grateful you are. The point is for us all to see how many different ways God is blessing us. For fun, get a pack of different color index cards, and maybe use some color pens to draw word art or a picture on each one. There are roughly 160 awake hours over the 10-day screen-fast, so see just how full you can fill your wall of gratitude.
• Exercise eke-up – Set a goal, any goal. Want to be able to run for half an hour? Try running for just a tenth of that on day 1 – just 3 minutes. Then add a tenth for day 2, and run 6 minutes. Keep adding a tenth a day and by day 10 you’ll be running 30 minutes. Was that too ambitious? Then start again back at the step before it got hard and cut your increments in half. Try this same, slow-and-steady, super-small-steps approach to whatever exercise (push-ups, planking, swimming, a stretching routine) you want to get better at.
• A pizza a day – Without a doubt, there is no more perfect food, what with the amazing variety of ways it can be prepared and varied. Do your research beforehand – when the Internet can still be a resource – or check out a few pizza-making cookbooks from your local library. Then plot out what kind of pizza you’ll make for each day. Preparations can involve making lists for the grocery store, and recruiting volunteers to craft each pie.
• Bike where you’ve never been – Find an old-fashioned paper map and use it to plot out places in your town you’ve never biked. Then head off and see what there is to see (avoiding any dangerous spots, of course) and afterward mark it off on your map, filling in every street you’ve biked up or down.

Stretch your attention span

• Read for an hour straight – Note down on a piece of paper a mark for every time you were tempted to stop reading and look at your phone.
• Watch a documentary carefully – This might seem a bit of a cheat, but being screen-free is more about intentionality than abstinence. So pick a good one deliberately (we’ve got plenty of suggestions) and watch it that way too, with your thumb on the pause button so it can be stopped and discussed.

*****

Join us for our 2026 screen fast from July 13-22! Sign up here.

Illustrations by Hannah Penninga.