Five screen-free afternoons that actually work

Everyone has a list of screen-free activities. Most of them last about eight minutes. These five have survived contact with actual children.

1. Build something with a rule

Open-ended building stalls quickly. Add one constraint — "it has to have a door you can open", "it has to be taller than the cat" — and it runs for an hour.

2. Give the robot a job

A dancing robot is a ten-minute toy on its own. Given an obstacle course made of cushions and a stopwatch, it is an afternoon.

3. Draw the instructions, not the picture

Ask for a set of instructions for something — a sandwich, a card trick, feeding the dog — drawn as numbered steps. Children who say they cannot draw will do this happily, and then test them on you.

4. The one-colour hunt

Pick a colour. Find fifteen things in the house that are that colour and line them up darkest to lightest. This is a sorting exercise wearing a disguise, and it works from about three upwards.

5. Make the box into the thing

The packaging a toy arrives in is frequently better than the toy. Lean into it: cut a door, cut windows, hand over the brush pens and leave.

None of this requires buying anything you do not already have — which is a strange thing for a shop to publish, but it is true, and we would rather be useful than pretend otherwise.