4 Ways to Help Your Kids Get Off Screens

Many of us remember growing up in a time when screens of various types, and watching them, formed a very small portion of our day. As soon as school was over, it was a rush back home to a whole afternoon of freedom with friends in the playpark across the street, or on a friend’s jungle gym, or in your own treehouse. Nowadays, watching TV or playing online takes up a lot more of our children’s time, and it’s not ideal when it comes to physical and mental growth and development.

1. Set up their Space for Real-Life Play

Encouraging kids to ditch the TV, laptop, tablet, or smartphone in favor of playing tea-time with their soft toys in their room, building a puzzle on their own, painting and coloring a portable playhouse, or clambering up ladders, squeezing through tunnels, cruising down a slide or squealing with delight on a swing, takes the right equipment. And at Monkey Bunks, this is an area of particular expertise.

2. Get them Outside with Outdoor Play sets and Play houses

Come have a look at our range of outdoor playhouses and playsets, a multifunctional playhouse that can be moved anywhere, painted and repainted, and used for everything from a coloring canvas to a fort in our Monkey Bunks online store.

Apart from the playhouses, which can be ornate mini-cottages for playing house to the multifunction Haus®, we have many playsets or jungle gyms to choose from, in various sizes to fit in any sized yard. Our Cedar Peak Log® playsets are all locally and sustainably sourced, have ladders and ropes for climbing and swinging, a little rooftop from where kids can peer into imaginary distances, rungs, slides, ladders, and swings.

An afternoon on one of these playsets is an absolute delight for young children, gets them moving and shaking, and with all that energy used for monkeying about, at bedtime they’ll be asleep before their little heads hit their pillows.

3. Indoor Furniture for Screen-Free Play

When the weather makes outside play difficult, we can help you kit out your child’s playroom with benches, play surfaces, small table and chair sets, storage space for toys, and desks for when they start reading and writing or doing homework.

Our range is focused on simplicity, and easy use, from plain wooden benches to colorful bench and storage shelf combo sets, toyboxes in imaginative shapes to add some fun to the room’s décor, and even play surfaces especially made for use with Lego®, and Duplo®  activity sets.

We stock chairs, rocking chairs, benches, and colorful playhouse frames from Adirondack®, or furniture pieces which are made according to the ideas and principles behind educational approaches such as Montessori and Waldorf. Montesorri furniture emphasizes natural materials, simplicity, and multi-functionality, while our range of Waldorf indoor playhouse frames is designed to stimulate the imagination with movable frames and colorful cloth to experiment with.

4. Grab some Low-Tech Games and Craft Materials

It’s no use worrying about your kids’ not spending enough time outdoors or being stuck to TV and computer or smartphone screens all day if they don’t have access to “play tools” as alternatives, whatever the weather. Our ranges for outdoor play are designed for safety, are sturdy, and made to withstand all forms of rough-and-tumble your childrens’ play scenarios can involve.

Our indoor range is designed also with you as a parent in mind, to help keep play areas tidy, clear of clutter, but easily accessible to your little one who can learn to be involved in packing out and packing up, placing their toys, playdough, sharpies, pencils, and paper, legos and duplos in their appropriate places, learn to keep their playspace tidy and clean, and to take care of their toys for long and happy hours of creativity and fun.

And with free shipping across the continental U.S., easy and secure payment on our website, and friendly, helpful service and advice, you need to look no further than Monkey Bunks to kit out your kids’ playtime spaces.