Children’s screen time and media consumption are in the news — and we are here to help. A new study reports that screen time is prevalent under grandparents’ care. The study from the University of Arizona looked at study looked at children’s screen time under their grandparents’ watch. It found that nearly 50% of the time American children spend with their grandparents involves interacting with or watching media on a screen.
The study found that media consumption is not only important for grandchildren, but that understanding media is just as important for grandparents. “Through our research, we discovered that media consumption is not only important for grandchildren, but that understanding media is just as important for grandparents. Grandparents may want to watch along with their grandchildren or just want to understand what the children are watching,” said lead study author Cecilia Sada Garibay.
Good news: we have free tools to make screen time a learning experience for kids and families.
If you are a grandparent or anyone else caring for children, we offer media-based learning materials and activities for kids as young as 8 years old to enrich their media experience. Like all of our resources, these fun, engaging learning tools are free for everyone. Many of those films, series and games are also available for free, as well.
Short Films For Kids
We’ve just launched a new series of free creative prompts based on super-short films that are bite-sized for kids’ attention spans: Watch and Write. Watch a film that’s as short as one minute, then springboard off a prompt for reflection, journaling, discussion or creative writing. The super short films cover a range of subjects and themes, suitable for kids of all ages, from elementary school through high school. The films and prompts are all free. These can be great resources for family viewing and discussion — or for setting up independent kids for watching and writing on their own. They are also a great way to get kids and adults engaged in active media consumption and co-viewing to make the most of screen time.
Check out our Watch and Write exercises.
Watch and Discuss
We offer free film discussion guides appropriate for children as young as 8 years old. They can help kids dig deeper into the facts and themes of a film — on their own, in discussion with a parent or grandparent, or as a prompt for journaling and reflection. These are great tools for enriching family screen time!
Our discussion guides are for films like:
- Short films like Golden Age Karate (5 minutes);
- Disney films like Chevalier and Queen of Katwe;
- Documentaries like Jane about Dr. Jane Goodall;
- Docu-series like Genius about Albert Einstein;
- and more!
Some of our guides are also available in Spanish!
Learn more and get your own Journeys in Film Discussion Guides.
Watch and Learn
We also offer free lessons and activities, for children as young as 8 years, across a range of school subjects. These free resources provide fun, educational ways to keep kids busy and learning/ Enhance your kids’ screen time experience of popular films like Hidden Figures, The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind, and Whale Rider!
Several guides include hands-on arts and crafts activities, like the instructions for making a bug kite for the free short film The Love Bugs (for ages 8 and up.)
Many lessons also include printable handouts that kids can work on solo, like design your own film festival activity in Lesson 6 of Summer of Soul.
Our lessons and activities are for films like:
- Box office hits like Disney’s Hidden Figures;
- Award-winning documentaries like Landfill Harmonic about the children’s orchestra that makes instruments out of recycled garbage;
- Biopics about inspirational people like He Named Me Malala about Malala Yousafzai;
- Docu-series like The Story of God with Morgan Freeman about world religions;
- Educational computer games like Walden, a game about Henry David Thoreau’s life at Walden Pond;
- Films based on true stories like Just Mercy;
- International films like Wadjda and Like Stars on Earth;
- Science shows like One Strange Rock;
- And more!
Some guides are also available in Spanish and Portuguese.
Learn more and get your own Journeys in Film Lessons and Activities for Kids.
You can search for our free resources for kids by film length, age, subject, theme, running time and more in the Journeys in Film Resource Library.
Also, if you’re using our resources as a grandparent, parent or babysitter, or otherwise outside a formal learning environment, we’d love to hear what you’re using and how it works for you. Please let us know!
Related Resources
Our free Discussion Facilitation Guidelines provide tips for making conversations media fun and easy.
