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No More Screen! Best 10 Spring Activities for Kids

During the bleak months of winter, the cold air, dark nights, snowy fields and icy sidewalks can greatly limit the amount of time kids can spend outside. While spring offers a plethora of highly anticipated sunny days, the weather can still be pretty unpredictable. As they say, “April showers bring May flowers!” Because of the inconsistent weather, it’s important to have a list of both outdoor and indoor activities for the kids on hand for when they’re driving you crazy! Of course, there are plenty of potential screen-free activities for kids when fun times are limited to indoors only—we would know, since our StairSlide is one of the best indoor activities ever! 

According to NI Direct, play has a positive impact on the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children. Play serves as a valuable tool for children to learn about the world around them and gain self-awareness. Additionally, play equips them with important skills that are essential for academic success, professional growth, and healthy relationships, including building confidence. While screens increase anxiety and stress for kids, creative play reduces it.

Screens are far from being the best thing in life—at StairSlide, we know that real life exists in, well, real life. Once the air warms enough to melt the snow, encourage little green tendrils of life to sprout from the earth, and bring all the animals out of hibernation, that’s when the real excitement of life begins!

We’ve put together a list of the best 10 spring activities for kids to help you and your kids have the best, most well-lived and exciting spring yet! Keep reading for scavenger hunt ideas, easy garden ideas, and other spring activity ideas for kids!

1. Turn the Staircase into a Slide!

As you are already most likely very well aware, kids LOVE slides. Having a StairSlide to pull out on a rainy spring day will no doubt keep the kids entertained for hours on end! You deserve a break, and the kids need rainy day activities that keep them off the screen. Stack some pillows at the bottom of the slide to create a soft landing and watch the kids go wild. Maybe even give the kids some extra blankets and chairs so they can make a fort to slide into! 

The most popular StairSlide is our Original 4-pack. This will cover 12 steps of your staircase. A typical flight of stairs has 13-16 steps, but if your stairs are bigger, the 5-pack or the 6-pack will provide even more of a thrill for the kids! You can race each other to see who can slide down the fastest, or you can bring along some pieces of cardboard to slide down even faster!

Bring the amusement park to you!

2. Paint or Draw Together

Creating art is the best way to intentionally notice, observe, and appreciate the world around you. Painting or drawing outside or inside is a great way to fully immerse yourself and your kids in the emergence of spring. Watercolors are easy and fun to use, but drawing with colored pencils or even just a simple pen can be just as enjoyable! Try picking one thing to all paint at the same time to compare how you each choose to portray it through your own unique artistic styles, or try finding individual objects such as flowers, trees, or cloudy skies to paint instead!

3. Springtime Baking Activities for Kids

Even though spring calls for outside adventures, there are still plenty of things to do inside, and baking is one of them! Switch out your winter snowflake and candy cane-shaped cookie cutters for flowers and baby bird-shaped cookie cutters, and whip up some pastel-colored buttercreams for frosting your springtime sugar cookies. For something a little more advanced and exciting, try baking lemon bars or berry cobbler—lemons and berries always taste like spring!

4. Venture Outside for a Spring-Inspired Scavenger Hunt

Flowers, green leaves, and baby birds are exciting anytime you see them, but especially at the start of spring, when life on earth is starting anew and nature’s colors are just barely starting to fill the world again. You can make up your own scavenger hunt list based on what items specific to your own neighborhood, or you can use these ideas to get started!

Spring Scavenger Hunt: Ideas of What to Look For

1. Pink blossoms
2. A birds nest (but don’t touch it—let the baby birds stay safe with their mama birds!)
3. A bumble bee
4. A funny-shaped cloud
5. A lady bug
6. Water (puddle, stream, or pond!)
7. A yellow flower
8. A spider’s web
9. A green leaf
10. A feather
11. Heart-shaped rock
12. A yellow leaf
13. An acorn

5. Gather and Press Wildflowers

While we wouldn’t suggest picking your neighbor’s prized tulips or plucking every single yellow flower from your own front lawn, finding wildflowers to gather and press is a great springtime activity for kids. To make the search for flowers even more exciting, visit your local library and read up on local flower varieties, or check out a flower identification book and use it to identify the flowers you find while out in nature. Doing so will help you and your kids engage more fully with the nature right around you, and pressing the flowers you find can help begin a beautiful collection that you’ll treasure for years to come—or at least until the next springtime, when you can once again gather wildflowers as they spring to life.

6. Plant a Springtime Garden

Planting a springtime garden can help kids learn about plant life cycles, the importance of caring for living things, and to appreciate the food they get to eat. Plus, there are few things more exciting than watching a seed magically turn into a tiny sprout poking up out of the soil. If you want to watch the roots grow to observe germination, “planting” a bean in a plastic bag with a wet paper towel is a great option. If planting in actual soil is more what you’re going for, and if you want to eventually eat the fruits of your labors, some of the easiest plants to grow are peas, radishes, and basil. Of course, flowers are also a great option for planting!

7. Pack a Picnic for the Park!

Nothing says spring has sprung more enthusiastically than a springtime picnic in the park. Fill a basket or bag with all your favorite snacks (hats off to you if you take the time to prepare the snacks yourself, which would make your picnic all the more memorable!), grab a blanket, and head to your favorite park for a pleasant afternoon outside. Make sure you find some shade under a tree or use sunscreen after all those days spent inside hiding from the cold! 

8. Search for Fairies and Forest Creatures

Spring is a magical time, and what is more magical than fairies and other magical creatures? Nature is full of flowers that can serve as fairy hats, long grasses that can be braided into rope, and acorn caps that can become little fairy bowls. Try gathering sticks to build little houses, and always keep your eyes open to spot the magical creatures as they hide behind trees and flowers!

9. Paint a Birdhouse

Painting a birdhouse is one of the best spring activities for kids—not only do they get to creatively express themselves by choosing colors, shapes, and designs to paint on a wooden birdhouse (which you could easily find at your local craft store or online), but painting it is only the beginning of the fun! Once the paint has dried, fill your birdhouse with bird food, hang it outside, and wait to watch the birds come and visit!

10. Don’t Shy Away From the Rain!

You know the saying, “April showers bring May flowers,” and spring rain definitely isn’t limited to the month of April. Spring brings more sunshine, and it can often bring more rain as well—but don’t let that stop you from enjoying all that spring has to offer! Throw on some rain boots and rain jackets, and go find the best puddles out there to jump in!

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Unlock Creativity With These 7 Homeschool Room Ideas

Dedicating specific spaces for the purpose of accomplishing specific tasks is important for anyone who is trying to get anything done—but especially for kids, and especially when kids are trying to get schoolwork done.

Even for families that usually send their kids to public schools, during the COVID pandemic when many schools were either fully or partly remote, homeschooling became the reality for pretty much everyone. Whether you currently homeschool full time, just want to have a dedicated study, or an art space for your kids, these 7 homeschool room ideas will help you create the perfect space to unlock creativity!

1. StairSlides offer Creative and Active Breaks!

For kids who attend school outside of their home, there is a clear separation between school and home. However, for kids who are homeschooled, the line between working at school and relaxing at home can be a little more blurred. This is great in some ways—when kids are homeschooled, they can be more involved around the house and learn more about cooking, gardening, and other tasks and skills that they probably wouldn’t be exposed to in a traditional school environment. However, this makes it even more important to take breaks and establish a schedule so your kids know when it’s time to work and when it’s time to play. 

Our StairSlide is perfect for integrating some active movement into your kids homeschool schedules—if they need just five minutes to get the wiggles out, the StairSlide is sure to do the trick! Kids love slides, and bringing out the StairSlide can provide much needed nuance to the drag of school. If kids are studying for too long with little creativity, they can get burnt out. Here are some ways to implement schoolwork into their sliding for some new ways to learn:

• Practice times tables and see if they can get the answer before reaching the bottom of the slide!
• If they are learning a language, have them translate a word while sliding. They won’t know what word you may have them translate so the anticipation will activate their competitive and active side!
• How many slides does it take to name all 7 continents? Encourage them to try again and beat their last time! 
• Practice spelling and every time they spell a word correctly they get to take a slide!

2. Homeschool Room Ideas: Create an Art Wall to Encourage Creativity

Hanging art that your child created on the walls is a great way to decorate your homeschool room, build your child’s confidence in their creative abilities, and encourage the creation of more art! If your kids like drawing or painting, wouldn’t you rather display it for everyone to see than store them away somewhere? 

Of course, you probably won’t be able to display every piece of art your child creates, but it can be exciting to choose which pieces will get a spot on the wall! Try making it a tradition by starting each month with a curation of the art they created during the past month—they can choose which ones they are the most proud of that they want to hang on the wall, and choose which pieces they want to replace from the month before.

There are many options for displaying your child’s art: bulletin boards with push pins, clothesline-style strings strung against the wall with little clips, frames of different sizes for a real gallery-type look, or even some simple blue tape! 

3. Set Up an Intentional Desk Space

Even in a room that is intentionally set aside for homeschooling, it is important to create a dedicated study desk. Most homeschool rooms serve many purposes, just like classrooms in schools—group lessons, art projects, bookwork, and snack time, just to name a few. Your homeschool room will probably feature a few different areas for these various activities, which is important so your kids can feel a sense of change and variation throughout their school days if they are largely spending time in the same homeschool room. Even simply having a comfy chair for reading time and a desk for more focused book work can help your kids feel purpose in focusing on their more difficult work when they really need to!

4. Always Stay Stocked Up on Important Supplies

Having a supply station is a great way to ensure that lack of materials never impedes your child’s desires to learn and create. Organization is key, especially if you are homeschooling multiple kids who are all going to need access to supplies both simultaneously and at varying times based on their own individual learning schedules and interests. 

Here are some ideas of supplies that are good to always have on hand:

• Paper (lined binder pages, copy paper, colored construction paper)
• Scissors, rulers, hole punchers
• Pens, pencils
• Paint, paint brushes, markers, colored pencils, crayons
• Tape, glue, strings

5. Homeschool Room Ideas: Hang a Whiteboard or Chalkboard to Write Out Big Ideas

When you have big ideas, you need big spaces to write them on! You might not think a whiteboard is necessary when you and your kids could easily write things out on paper, but some kind of large drawing board really is an absolute must in homeschool rooms! Having a Whiteboard or Chalkboard will allow you and your kids to make lists of things you need to get done and goals you want to accomplish, write encouraging messages to each other, work out difficult math equations together, and draw pictures for creative breaks!

6. Homeschool Room Ideas: Line the Walls With Bookshelves

If you’re homeschooling your kids, you probably have a ton of books! Bookshelves are a great way to keep all of your fun reading books, math workbooks, notebooks, planners, and dictionaries organized and easily accessible. Having one wall completely filled with shelves can be a fun way to create a library and instill a love of reading in your children.

Keep in mind that bookshelves can hold books, but they can also serve many other useful purposes! Bookshelves are perfect for storing supply bins and displaying 3-D art creations.

7. Make Space For Beautiful Messes

Some of the most creative ideas result in the most messy of messes—and your homeschool room should definitely provide space for that. Whether your kids are creating art by flicking paint haphazardly from paintbrushes to canvases, learning about biology by planting seeds in soil, or concocting some sort of experimental science investigation with various ingredients that might result in an unexpected reaction, you’ll want an area that can get dirty so the rest of your homeschool room can stay clean and organized. 

If you have space outside, it might be fun to change things up by taking your classroom out of doors, especially if that day’s art project or experiment is particularly messy. However, indoor spaces can also easily be mess-proofed. Find a table that is easy to wipe clean, lay down a tarp to protect the floor and catch anything that might fall or drip off the table, and let your kids learn through play!

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Improve Behavior: The Best Toys for Kids with ADHD

While most toys can entertain any kid for at least a little bit of time, finding the best toys for kids with ADHD can sometimes be a little more difficult. What makes a toy especially helpful for kids with ADHD, and what are the best toys for kids with ADHD?

What Makes Toys Good for Kids with ADHD?

You might be wondering what distinguishes a toy as not only being fun and engaging for any kid, but especially for a kid with ADHD. For the most part, kids with ADHD benefit most from toys that help improve their memory, require linear thinking and follow obvious yet exciting patterns, and help improve their social skills by encouraging social interaction with other kids.

Of course, any child would probably love the toys that are designed specifically for kids with ADHD in mind, as they are specifically created with the purpose of capturing attention and captivating developing minds. Keep reading to find out what types of toys are best for kids with ADHD, and to see some of our top picks!

The Best Toys for Kids with ADHD: Encourage Movement

Our StairSlide is one of the best toys for kids with ADHD—not only is it simple and easy to use, but it can provide hours of activity. Movement is important for all kids, but especially for kids with ADHD, and while they will probably want to be active all on their own, the StairSlide can help channel their active minds and bodies.

If your kid often runs all over the house but you want them to stay in a particular area, either so you can better watch them or so you can get have some quiet space to get some work done in other parts of the house, just set up our StairSlide! It will keep your children entertained for hours as they race up the stairs and slide down over and over again!

The Best Toys for Kids with ADHD: Keep their Hands Busy so their Minds Can Focus

Sometimes toys are purely for fun, when all you want your kid to do is play. However, toys can also help kids with ADHD to focus better in classrooms and other environments where they need to pay attention to learn and retain important information. Toys like the Tangle Fidget Toy and classic Fidget Spinners are perfect for this purpose—they are small and easy to slip in a backpack or even a pocket, they are quiet so they won’t distract others or hinder their ability to listen to whoever is speaking to them, and they will keep their hands busy so that their minds can focus on other tasks and learning opportunities at hand.

Provide Sensory Experiences

Kids with ADHD love playing with anything that feels interesting to touch and manipulate. This can range anywhere from slime to bubbles to foam. Kinetic Sand is a favorite for many children and parents because it is relatively easy to keep clean, can be easily transported for any occasion that might take you away from home, and can be used over and over again.

Build and Connect

Legos are a classic toy, and are well known for inspiring creation and innovation in both young kids and adults alike, so they can be fun to play with as a way to interact more intentionally with your child. Lego kits that result in specific creations are great for helping your kid practice following directions, while a bin of random Lego pieces is great for encouraging original creativity! Another option is Interlox Squares, which are super easy to transport and can be cleaned up really easily since they are a little bigger than most Legos—and probably won’t inflict as much pain if you step on one of them in the middle of the night!

Captivate Attention for Hours

Some toys designed for kids with ADHD can be super simple in nature and serve as a fidget toy specifically, allowing kids to fidget with something in their hands so that they can in turn focus better on other information being taught to them. However, other toys are created for the purpose of stimulating both the hands and the mind, and the Perplexus Rookie is one of them. While we wouldn’t recommend this toy as one to bring to school to help enhance focus during school lessons, this toy is perfect for road trips, waiting rooms, and playing with around the house during a quiet moment.

Teach Time Management and Planning

While we at StairSlide won’t be the first ones to recommend video games as your child’s go-to activity (that’s why we created the StairSlide, after all, to help your kids stay active and screen-free), we must admit that sometimes video games can serve a purpose in helping your kids develop some important skills, as long as those video games are used in addition to all the other screen-free activities we recommend. For kids with ADHD, Minecraft is a popular and, in some ways, useful game for helping kids learn about planning and time management. Both skills are necessary to be successful in the game of Minecraft, and both skills are also very important for kids with ADHD to practice. Just make sure that you take time to practice those important skills out in the real world, too!

The Best Toys for Kids with ADHD: Require Straightforward Focus

Puzzles can be really great for kids with ADHD, especially puzzles that stimulate both the hands and the mind and involve moving parts that are visually interesting. Rubik’s Cube is the most classic example of this kind of puzzle, and will most likely keep your kid busy for hours since they are so difficult to solve! Having just one task to focus on, such as a puzzle, can help your kid practice and improve their focus.

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Super Summer Bucket List!

Get the most out of your Summer! With the kids’ out of school, they might have a little bit too much time on their hands. To avoid hearing the familiar whine, “I’m BORED!” pick one, some, or all of these activities to make sure they (you) get the most out of their (your) Summer! 

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How Did You Use to Slide?

Stairsliding without a Stairslide?

 

Even if our parents told us not to play on the stairs, we still did it. Now, as the parents, we seem to forget; no matter how much we say to our kids NOT to play on the stairs, they will find a way. 

via GIPHY

Personally, my three brothers and I would make an event of it. Surprisingly enough, we never broke any limbs; it must’ve been due to how much milk we drank. Whenever our mom finally got us to wash our sheets, we would lump the bedding into a snowball of fabric, wiggle our little bodies right in the middle, and fly down the stairs. And as I’m writing this, I’m beginning to realize we were playing in dirty laundry the whole time. I’m retrospectively grossed out.

How did you use to slide? Don’t say you didn’t; it’s not healthy to lie to yourself. Did you slide down in a laundry basket to receive a first-hand lesson on why helmets were invented? Or did you slide down on a pillow, bumping your tailbone on each and every step?

Thank goodness we have the Stairslide now. No worrying about your kids sliding in the dirty laundry (I still can’t believe I did that) or tumbling down in a flimsy laundry basket.

 

 

With the Stairslide, it takes the previously dangerous sport of improvised stair sliding and turns it into a sliding experience your kiddo would have at your local playground. The difference is that it’s inside, and you have control over how fast it is (the more slide sections, the faster it’ll be).

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It's a Giveaway!

Do you remember waiting in anticipation early Christmas morning? You kept poking your exhausted parents to get up (they suspiciously looked like they didn’t get any sleep) before the sun even considered rising. Once the grown-ups woke up with their camera in hand, they would unleash you to tear into the lovingly wrapped presents. Naturally, you had to pose with every present for a picture in the scrapbook or a feature on the home video.

If you bought the Stairslide, it’s more than likely that you’re the exhausted parents documenting the morning. Of course, when you see those sparkling eyes and exclaimed smiles, it’s all worth it. You love Christmas morning; the reason might’ve changed, but the morning is still full of love. 

Thank you for choosing Stairslide to be part of the happy day. It really means so much to us. So much that we want to give something back through a little contest. The winner will receive a big FREE plush penguin that’s perfect for sliding. I promise; you want this penguin. It’s a prototype which means it's completely one of a kind (and it's insanely soft)!

 

To enter, all you need to do is share some of your Christmas joy! Well, there are a couple more steps, but spreading Christmas joy is definitely the main goal. 

 

1. Follow us on Instagram.

 

2. Take a video of your kids sliding Christmas morning.

 

3. Post on Instagram with #stairslideisreal

 

We will then pick our favorite video; I have no doubt that this will be a difficult decision, but we will then pick our favorite video to be the lucky winner. Remember to have fun and stay safe!

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Be Back Soon!

To be specific, we’ll be back to processing orders after December 20th. The excitement for the Stairslide this holiday season exceeded our expectations by a pinch. With our record-breaking sale, we planned to run out of inventory by December 1st. However, Black Friday weekend had a different idea; by Sunday, November 28th, we sold out of our slides for Christmas.

While our online stock is on pause, we do have one physical location in Utah! You can find us at a mall kiosk in the University Mall in Orem, Utah. So, no worries for Utah shoppers or extreme gifters willing to travel like Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1996’s Jingle All The Way (I’ve actually never seen the end of that movie, I assume he found the true meaning of Christmas).

We are moving our manufacturing operations to the States during this slight lull and, of course, making more slides. Any orders placed after November 28th are set to start processing after December 20th. They won’t make it to your home by Christmas, but they are still available for Birthday gifts, gifts for giving sake, and the slides make for a perfect Groundhog Day present (that makes sense if you don’t think about it).

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10 Setup & Sliding Tips

Anything fun can quickly become very not fun if misused; playgrounds are fun, but if you run around on the wood chips without shoes, you’re sure to get splinters on the bottom of your feet (decidedly not fun). The same idea can be applied to an indoor playground, aka the StairSlide! Follow these setup and sliding tips to get the most from your Stairslide:

1. Reposition the StairSlide after each use. Did you stick the landing on the first try? Make sure nothing wiggled out of place to recreate your fantastic performance.

2. Have at least one foot of landing area for each stair covered by the StairSlide.  The wall adjacent to your stairs will thank you.

3. Stack and store the slides when not in use. You know the heart attack you get when you miss a step? Now, imagine if the heart attack is followed by your feet slipping out from under you because you stepped on a slide. Scary, right?

4. Do not use near or under stair railings. No one likes a bonked head or a goose egg that doesn’t result in a cute baby goose. (fig. 1) 

5. Use in a seated position. There’s a time and place for acrobatics; don’t try any new moves while you and the ground are moving at different speeds. 

6. Bend your knees and land on your feet. If you drop a stick, it falls flat. If you drop a bendy spring, it bounces back as if nothing happened. 

7. Use with adult supervision. Someone needs to witness (and maybe time) how quickly you slide down the stairs. (fig. 2)

 

8. Do not slide down headfirst. It takes expertise to do a headstand safely, while most people over the age of one can easily execute a foot stand. Make sure you land in a foot stand.

9. Do not use if you exceed 155 lbs Unfortunately, this means your sliding days are behind you. To quote an unnamed source, “I lead others to a treasure I cannot possess.”

10. No more than one person should be on the StairSlide at a time. Sharing is caring, but learning how to take turns is also important.

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Meet Damian!

Everyone knows a dad’s no. 1 priority during playtime is fun!

Which is why one of the faces on StairSlide’s new ownership team is none other than fun dad Damian Dayton!

According to Damian, StairSlide™ is more than just a slide, “Like many parents today, my wife and I have struggled to raise our active 6-year-old son without defaulting to excessive screen time. And then StairSlide™ came into our lives.

“Honestly, without the StairSlide™ (and a healthy dose of imagination), I don’t know how we would have made it through quarantine. Not only did the StairSlide™ bring hours of active play to our home, but as the world started opening up, it also brought new friends. 

“Like with many startups, we noticed that StairSlide™ faced more than a few challenges. So we gathered a group of parents invested in their own kids' development and got them to invest in StairSlide™ to help this company reach its full potential. So we are excited, to say the least. 

 Agreed! We are so excited to see where StairSlide™ can go under the direction of Damian and other fun-loving parents.