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Screen Time Rules and Reward Charts Printables
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Are you trying to keep an eye on the amount of time that your children are spending using screens?
Do you want to control or restrict the amount of time that your kids spend watching television, playing on computers and games consoles or staring at their phones or tablets?
In her bestselling book on how to take back control of your children's screen time, Calmer Easier Happier Screen Time, parenting expert Noël Janis-Norton recommends the use of rewards to earn limited amounts of screen time, earned by completing tasks such as chores, homework and music practice.
Of course one of the great difficulties of controlling screen time is the fact that schools now set much of their homework to be completed online, and work is expected to be presented electronically.
Since the lockdowns of 2020 it has become the norm to use online apps to set homework - although with the rapid increases in technology this would probably happened anyway, just a little more slowly - the amount of time that kids are expected to use computors for school work as increased enormously.
So what can me do? If our children are forced by their schools to spend more time on cuputors both in and out of school, it is even more important that we make sure that our children get some breaks away from screens.
A really good way to keep track of whether your kids have earned ther screen time is to have either a printable check list or by giving your kids tickets for their screen time.
Here are some of the best ideas for free printable screen time reward charts, checklists and reward tickets to keep track of whether the kids have earned their daily amount of screen time.
If you are wondering how much screen time your kids should be rewarded with, here are the current screen time guidelines for babies, children and teens.
The Screen Time Rules
If you want to encourage your kids to spend less time on their computors, phones, tablets, watching TV or using gaming consoles, you need to make your expectations really clear.
This printable from Your Modern Family makes a statement of intent for your screen time rules.
Free Printable Screen Time Checklists
I love these free printable checklists which you can use to ensure that your kids have completed specific tasks before putting on the television, using their computers, phones, tablets or games consoles.
If your kids are old enough to do chores such as making their bed and reading this is a really good list from Your Modern Family to follow.
This list from Australian website Stay at Home Mum covers lots of good ideas for slightly older kids who can mange some more specific tasks and chores.
This printable checklist lets you choose which tasks that you want your child to complete to earn their screen time. This way you can focus on what non-screen related activities are relevant to your family.
You can change it from week to week and vary it for school holidays and breaks.
This checklist is suitable for younger children, and is a good start to make sure that they at least do not loll around in their PJs in front of the TV all day!
This is a good list for the weekends or during the school holidays, again for a younger child.
Mind you I still like reading with my cat, so a real animal might be an option too!
This is a good weekday after school list for kids of mixed ages where some are reading and some can understand the pictures.
This list includes a lot of ides for things to do during the school summer holidays to get the screen time. Perfect for any break, bank holiday or inset day with fine weather.
This list is particularly good for encouraging your child's creativity., and for keeping up kid's skills such as reading and writing, which can go backwards during long school holidays.
This good hybrid list requires some basic tasks to be completed, then screen time is earned with creative or academic tasks.
The tasks are not onerous, but are all good screen-free ways to boost creativity and get some exercise and fresh air.
This is another screen time checklist with lots of creative activity ideas on this list. Times could be adjusted for older or yourger kids.
Printable Technology Tickets
Another way to manage your children's screen time is by issuing tickets for completing important, useful and creative tasks and activities.
These tickets are multi-purpose, so can be printed once and used over and over again. Maybe you could print them onto cardstock or laminate them to make them last longer.
These tickets from Making Lemonade can be used for any age. You get to choose how the screen time can be earned!
This daily set of tickets cover a whole week's worth of screen time, allowing you to balance the amount of time spent on screens across the week.
If it's a rainy day in the school holidays or at the weekend, here are 100 Screen Free Things To Do On A Rainy Day. From crafts and games to the best places to visit, if it's raining you will never be left wondering what to do again!