Why We Don’t Do Screens

I don’t own a tablet. The only reason I ever will is for actual homeschool use or a long car trip — not as a default answer to “I’m bored” or “I need ten quiet minutes.”

I see it constantly: kids glued to a screen, completely checked out, needing constant stimulation just to function through an afternoon. No imagination being built, no personality stretching itself, no creativity required — just passive consumption, over and over. That’s not who I want my kids to become. I want them bored sometimes. I want them to sit with nothing and have to make something out of it themselves.

So instead of a screen, I started writing little prompts on slips of paper and dropping them into a jar.

Nothing fancy — small, open-ended ideas pulling from a few categories: things to notice in nature, things to create, things to collect, and a few story starters to get their imagination moving on paper instead of staring at a glowing rectangle. When someone needs something to do, they pull a slip. No explanation needed, no setup required — just open the jar, see what it says, and go make something.

How the Prompt Jar Works

The categories:

🌿 Nature — prompts that send them outside (or bring the outside in) to notice something real. Collect, observe, draw what they find.

🎨 Create — open-ended art prompts with just enough direction to get started, but plenty of room to make it their own.

🪶 Collect — small scavenger-style prompts that turn noticing into gathering, and gathering into something to look at and talk about.

📖 Story Starters — a single line to kick off a story, leaving the rest entirely up to them — spoken out loud, drawn, or both.

What’s actually surprised me most: this works just as well for my 3-year-old as it does for my 9-year-old. The prompts flex depending on who pulls them — a 3-year-old might gather grass and scribble a creature with help, while a 9-year-old runs with the same prompt completely independently, turning it into something far more detailed. Same jar, same slip, two completely different but equally engaged kids — and neither of them needed a screen to get there.

Download the Free Sample Set

Want to try it with your own kids? I put together a free sample set — three prompts from each category — so you can build your own version of this jar at home.

If it’s a hit in your house too and you want more, I’ve got a full 30-prompt set available on my Etsy shop — same categories, just a lot more to pull from.