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Important update from TheSchoolRun

For the past 13 years, TheSchoolRun has been run by a small team of mums working from home, dedicated to providing quality educational resources to primary school parents. Unfortunately, rising supplier costs and falling revenue have made it impossible for us to continue operating, and we’ve had to make the difficult decision to close. The good news: We’ve arranged for another educational provider to take over many of our resources. These will be hosted on a new portal, where the content will be updated and expanded to support your child’s learning.

What this means for subscribers:

  • Your subscription is still active, and for now, you can keep using the website as normal — just log in with your usual details to access all our articles and resources*.
  • In a few months, all resources will move to the new portal. You’ll continue to have access there until your subscription ends. We’ll send you full details nearer the time.
  • As a thank you for your support, we’ll also be sending you 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep.

A few changes to be aware of:

  • The Learning Journey weekly email has ended, but your child’s plan will still be updated on your dashboard each Monday. Just log in to see the recommended worksheets.
  • The 11+ weekly emails have now ended. We sent you all the remaining emails in the series at the end of March — please check your inbox (and spam folder) if you haven’t seen them. You can also follow the full programme here: 11+ Learning Journey.

If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you for being part of our journey it’s been a privilege to support your family’s learning.

*If you need to reset your password, it will still work as usual. Please check your spam folder if the reset email doesn’t appear in your inbox.

4 things for kids to do screen-free

Screen-free activities for children
Step away from the iPad, turn off the TV and put down the phone: there are so many brilliant things to do that don't involve screens (but do involve lots of fun!). Learn to make chalk paint, create a space nebula, fold your own pet (paper, origami) frog and take your first steps into garden art with an extract from 101 Things for Kids to do Screen-Free by Dawn Isaac.

It's true: screen-free time doesn't have to hurt. In fact, turn off your screens and you might find there are other things to do. Just off the top of my head I can think of 101 of them.

So how about experimenting yourself? Why not try walking on tin can stilts, making a magic wallet, cooking a mug cake, creating a mini golf course of painting with water guns? You might even find you have fun at the same time.

Make chalk paint

Sometimes things are so small they're of no use at all. Stop looking at your little brother like that – I was talking about chalks! Yes, when you've used them so often they're just a little stub, it can be tempting to throw them away, but don't! Because old ends of coloured chalks are perfect for recycling as chalk paint.

Create a space nebula

Creating space in your bedroom – that’s tricky. I mean it probably involves tidying for starters.

Recreating part of space in your bedroom – that’s a lot easier. In particular we are going to create a nebula, otherwise known as a giant interstellar cloud of dust and gases where stars are born or die. Like I said, it’s a lot easier than tidying up.

Fold an origami frog

If you’ve always wanted a pet frog, this is the one for you. After all, real frogs are tricky – what with them being wild creatures and avoiding human beings wherever possible. This one though is happy to be tamed, has slime-free skin, needs no slug-heavy diet and best of all, will turn somersaults whenever you want.

Create garden art

Now let’s face it – nature is already pretty good at this whole artistic thing, but in most gardens it is a bit limited. Oh look, it’s made a flower, and a tree, and there’s a flower and what’s that? Oh yes, I do believe it’s another tree! But actually there are all sorts of potential artworks waiting to happen – nature just needs to borrow a bit of your creativity.

More screen-free boredom-busters for kids

If you've enjoyed this small selection of hands-on, screen-free activity suggestions, 101 Things for Kids to do Screen-Free by Dawn Isaac (£10.35, Kyle Books) has 97 more ideas to try!