Screen Free Christmas Activities for Kids

Looking for ideas for screen free Christmas activities for kids? It can be hard to strike a balance when it comes to screen time - especially for older children - at a time when everyone’s exhausted after the long autumn term at school. While some downtime on screens is fine, and everyone loves watching festive films and seasonal specials, Christmas is also a good time to spend quality family time together away from screens. There are lots of fun activities everyone in the family will enjoy, read Christmas activities for kids of all ages.

Screen-Free Christmas Activities for Toddlers And Preschoolers (0–5 Years)

If you’re looking for screen-free activities for toddlers and preschoolers, try these easy and fun Christmas activity ideas suitable for the under fives in your life.

Make Christmas Handprint Keepsakes

Christmas is a great time for crafting, and it’s an enjoyable way of keeping toddlers and preschoolers entertained without screens. Crafts using handprints are an easy art idea for this age group and will create keepsakes that can be given as gifts and reused every year.

We like these ideas from Childhood Is Magic, using paint, paper and clay to create everything from Santas to penguins:

Decorating Biscuits

While baking with younger kids can be more messy than productive, an easy project for Christmas is to decorate shop-bought biscuits, festive style. Use Rich Tea or plain gingerbread biscuits and

decorate using green and red icing pens with festive sprinkles and glitter. You have guaranteed tasty treats that also look great.

Read Christmas Books Together

Reading Christmas books together with your under fives will help with their literacy skills, spark their imagination and build excitement in the run-up to the big day, and it’s completely screen-free. You could build a collection of Christmas books you bring out each year, or some people like the idea of a book advent where the child unwraps a different book each day during December. Classic festive favourites include The Snowman and The Jolly Christmas Postman, while more modern reads include You Chose At Christmas, Peppa Pig: Peppa’s Christmas and That’s Not My Santa.

Screen-Free Christmas Activities for Kids Ages 6–8

Keep kids age 6-8 off screens this Christmas with these creative activity ideas.

Writing Letters To Santa

Children love writing a letter to Santa to spell out exactly what they want to find under the tree. The Royal Mail even has a special address for all Santa letters, with a guaranteed reply. You might want to keep kids entertained with the Christmas Eve tradition of writing your note and then sending it up the chimney. While this won’t work with modern, chimney-free houses, the Santa letter is great writing practise for this age group, however you send it.

Making Christmas Decorations

A great screen-free Christmas activity for this age is to make Christmas decorations. Paper chains are as simple classic and incredible easy to make, as are paper snow flakes. Salt dough, air drying clay or modelling clay can be rolled to make brilliant Christmas-shaped decorations that, once dry, you can spend hours decorating in Christmas colours.

Writing Christmas Cards

Writing and sending Christmas cards to friends and family is an easy way of keeping in touch and sending a traditional seasonal greeting. It’s also writing practise that’s screen-free! Most children of this age will want to send cards to their entire class, and you can get them to write cards to friends and relatives, too, so there’s plenty to keep them busy.

Screen-Free Christmas Activities for Ages 9–12

If you need ideas for screen-free activities for your older, tween-age children, try one of these ideas.

Design Place Settings

A fun screen-free activity for ages 9-12 is to help them to make and decorate place cards to spell out where everyone will sit for Christmas dinner. Even if you’re not having guests this year, it’s still a fun way to decorate the table, and a way of keeping crafty kids occupied for a while.

Make Your Own Christmas Crackers

Christmas crackers are an essential part of Christmas dinner, but they can be pricey. A fun – and screen-free – activity for older kids is to make your own crackers. Not only will this save money, but it’s also a fun craft and you can personalise each cracker to the recipient. Save up your loo roll tubes, grab the glitter glue and follow this BBC Good Food guide.

Give Them The Gift Of A Book

Have you heard of Iceland's Christmas book tradition? Known as Jólabókaflóð, or the ‘Christmas book flood,’ this is where Icelanders exchange books as gifts on Christmas Eve and spend the evening in bed reading them. While spending the day in bed might not be the most practical idea, keep your tweens off screens by giving them a book gift to open before Christmas, so they have something new to read in the run-up to the big day. The Guardian has a list of the top five young adult books of the year, with lots for bookworms to get stuck into.

Indoor Christmas Activities for Kids

Bake Christmas Treats

Christmas is a great time to reduce screen time and get into the kitchen with your children of all ages, and it’s an easy and tasty festive tradition. Your level of involvement depends on how old they are, but something like these cinnamon Christmas biscuits can be baked by older kids, decorated by younger ones and even used as tree decorations.

Christmas Crafting With Lego

While some children might shun the idea of giving up screens for an activity like crafting, why not inspire them using an item they love instead? Look on the US Lego website or the UK version for creative inspiration for holiday builds for all ages, including an idea for making a Lego snow globe you can give as a gift.

Play Board Games

Christmas is a perfect time to dust off the board games for some screen-free family fun. Board games can boost your brain power, improve your strategic thinking and help you bond as a family. Classic board games such as Cluedo have junior versions for younger family members and Scrabble is always

good for secretly sneaking in some spelling practise. Traditional parlour games, such as the classic charades, are also fun for all ages.

Outdoor Christmas Activities for Kids

Going To The Pantomime

Going to your local pantomime is a fun, and very family-friendly tradition for everyone to look forward to – no screens involved. Keep an eye out for announcements about your local production early in the year, and book tickets for the run-up to the big day.

Twilight Light Walk

Everyone loves looking at festive Christmas lights, so whatever their age, take a local walking tour to look at Christmas lights on local houses. Spot the house that go all out with lights and decorations, and you can spot trees in windows or even count wreaths. It’s a free, fun and magical way of brightening up your evening and working off some energy.

Christmas Eve Walk

Excitement levels will peak on Christmas Eve, even for your older kids! Plan a screen-free activity involving fresh air where everyone will burn off some energy, be it going to the play park or taking a long walk around your neighbourhood. Wrap everyone up well and take flasks of hot chocolate.

Christmas Activity FAQs

How Do I Encourage Kids To Enjoy Screen-Free Time At Christmas?

You can encourage kids to enjoy screen-free time by setting boundaries for realistic screen usage and making sure that screen-free time is the default activity, and not the other way round. Christmas is ideal for this as there are lots of fun, analogue alternatives for them to enjoy. Set up specific screen-free times, such as a dedicated book reading hour, for all the family. Try and model good habits too, and put your own phone away.

What Can We Do With Mixed-Age Siblings?

There are lots of screen-free Christmas activities you can do with mixed age siblings. Baking and decorating is a good one for all ages, and everyone can get involved in making Christmas decorations such as paper chains.