Unplugged Stories: Make Your Own Mad Libs
Mad Libs is an exciting word replacement activity. This is a great way for families to get creative using specific words in part of a song or story.
Activities for Families
Create Your Own Screen Time Comic
Tell a story about one or more characters who find a way to spend less time using their screen device. How do they unplug? Is there anything (or anyone) that helps them put away their smartphone or turn off their laptop? A hero perhaps? What does the character do instead?
Create a Screen Time Diary for Unplugging to Connect
In this activity, you’ll become a scientist of sorts and gather information about how you spend time using screen devices in your house. For families that want to spend less time on their phones, this can be an important first step. You might have a feeling about how you use your devices, but if you wrote a little about your screen time each day, what might you learn? Try this for several days and find out.
How Much Time Do You Use On-Screen Technology at Home?
In this activity, you and your family will make a quick list of the technologies you use at home and how much time you spend using them. Next, as a group, you’ll come up with new and creative ways to spend less time on your devices and more time connecting with one another, for example, or exercising, pursuing your hobbies, cooking, or playing games together.
Don’t Buy Into the Drama
Gossip spreads quickly on social media, texting and group chats. Likewise, bullying has been a part of school communities for a long time, but social media, texting and screen devices give people more access to one another. This makes it easier for the drama to unfold.
Count Your Fillers
When speaking, many people will use “like,” “um,” or “uh” to fill the silent space in a conversation. Other words you might here are “so” or “right.” This is a habit, but one you can modify. This activity helps to eliminate these fillers in conversation and build public speaking skills.
Text Talk: The Difference Between Nice and Mean
Some things can sound nice or rude depending on how you say them, but in a text message, you can’t show that you’re smiling. This activity is a fun way to practice saying and hearing the emotional meaning behind someone’s words. Notice how different we sound when we say something with kindness or cruelty, then think about what happens when the same thing is just a text message.
Unplugged Charades
This is no ordinary game of charades. In this activity, you’ll start by thinking about things you do with a screen device, like watching videos on a laptop or listening to music on your smartphone, and things you do without a screen device, like riding a bike or watering your garden. How is the classic … Read more
Create a Mini Commercial
Practice persuasive communication and video creation. How would you convince someone to buy (or NOT buy) an object in your house?
Create a Life’s Purpose Collage
A sense of purpose can help children and teens feel more optimistic about the future and believe in themselves when faced with challenges. What exactly is purpose? Purpose involves far-reaching goals that could benefit not just oneself but others as well. Meeting a life challenge, mastering a skill, building something big, or finishing a project … Read more