🌧️ December School Holidays: Screen-Free Things to Do at Home (Singapore)

The December holidays in Singapore are long. Mid-November to the end of the year, most of it wet, with a public holiday and a lot of visiting in the middle.

By day three somebody is bored, and by week two the iPad has quietly become the whole day. This is a realistic plan: not an itinerary, just a rhythm and a shortlist.

A loose rhythm beats a schedule

Children do better with a predictable shape to the day than with a planned timetable, which collapses the first time it rains. Three slots is enough:

• Morning: something active. Playground before it gets hot, swimming, a walk, a scooter round the block.
• After lunch: something quiet. This is the slot that saves the day. Colouring, reading, a jigsaw, building, a nap for the small ones.
• Late afternoon: something together. Baking, a card game, helping cook, a video call to a grandparent.

One outing most days, not three. A day with one good thing in it and a lot of pottering is a better holiday day than a day with three activities and two meltdowns.

Decide the screen rule once

The single most useful thing you can do before the holidays start is set the screen rule in advance and say it out loud, so you are not negotiating it fresh every morning. A fixed window works better than a daily total you have to police.

Two things that make it stick:

1. Have the alternative ready. A bored child told to find something to do will find a screen. A colouring book already open on the table, or a jigsaw half-started, gets picked up.
2. Expect the argument at the end, not the start. Stopping is the hard part. A five-minute warning helps more than any rule.

If "just one more level" is the daily fight in your house, we have a story about exactly that: A Screen Time Story for Kids, about three minutes, read aloud.

Fifteen screen-free things that actually fill time

At home, cheap or free

1. Colouring, properly set up. Sharpened pencils, a cleared table. The ASMR Colouring Book is $19.90 and the scenes are Singapore ones, which children find funnier than you would expect.
2. Baking. Measuring is maths that nobody argues about.
3. A jigsaw left out on a table for days, added to in passing.
4. Cardboard box building. The delivery boxes from December are the raw material.
5. A reading-aloud habit. Fifteen minutes after lunch. Our 55 feeling stories are free, about three minutes each, and each one ends on something to talk about.
6. Letter writing. To a grandparent, a cousin, a teacher. Posting it is half the fun.
7. Real jobs. Washing the car, repotting a plant, sorting the toy cupboard with a bin bag and a rule about what goes.
8. A calm corner they build themselves. Cushions, a blanket, a soft toy, a torch. Our guide to setting one up at home has the full version, and it earns its keep during a long holiday.

Out of the house, low cost

9. The public library. Air-conditioned, free, and the holiday programmes fill up fast.
10. A hawker-centre breakfast, just the two of you.
11. The park connector on scooters or bikes.
12. Botanic Gardens, a reservoir, or a beach, early in the day.
13. The free museum days and community-club holiday activities — check your CC's programme at the start of the holidays, because the good ones fill.
14. A bus ride with no purpose. Top deck, somewhere you have never been, back again.
15. Visiting people. Cousins, old neighbours, a childminder they loved. Unstructured time with other children does more than any activity.

When they say they are bored

Boredom is not a problem to be solved immediately. It is the gap where children start inventing things, and the instinct to fill it instantly is the reason some children cannot entertain themselves at all.

What helps:

• Let it sit for ten minutes. Boredom is uncomfortable, not harmful.
• Offer a start, not a plan. "There's a box in the hall" rather than "why don't you build a rocket".
• Have a boredom list on the fridge, written by your child in week one, so it is their idea in week three.

There is a story about this too, if a read-aloud lands better than a lecture: A Story About Being Bored.

The rain plan

Prepare five indoor things before the holidays start, and keep them back so they are new when you need them: a jigsaw, a baking recipe with ingredients already bought, a card game, a colouring book and pencils, and a box of building material. Rotate one at a time. Introducing all five on the first wet day wastes them.

A long run of indoor days also makes everybody irritable, which is worth naming out loud rather than treating as bad behaviour. Our story A Story About Getting Outside is about precisely that week.

Getting back into routine before Term 1

The last few days matter more than the first few back.

• Move bedtime earlier by 15 minutes a day, starting about a week before term.
• Return to school wake-up times three or four days ahead, even though it is unpopular.
• Do one practical run-through: uniform out, bag packed, the actual morning sequence.
• Expect the first week back to be exhausting, with an after-school collapse most days. That is normal.

If your child is anxious about the new year, a new class or a new school, our guides on school anxiety and starting Primary 1 cover the preparation that helps, and exam nerves is written for the children themselves.

The short version

Three slots a day, one outing, and the screen rule agreed before the holidays start. Have five indoor things ready for the rain. Let boredom sit. Keep a reading-aloud habit after lunch. And start pulling bedtime back a week before term.