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20 Screen-Free Activities: Printable Fridge Card Set

Five beautifully designed cards, four activities each, organized by age group (12–18 months, 18–24 months, 2–3 years, 3–4 years, 4–5 years). Every activity uses household items only — no special supplies. Each card fits on a standard fridge with a magnet. When friends visit and ask “Where did you get those?” the Tovi URL is on every card.

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5 pages

Parents of children aged 1–5

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What’s included

5 printable cards (one per age group)

4 activities per card with materials and steps

Age-appropriate developmental focus

Household items only — nothing to buy

Tovi branding with QR code to the app

Why parents love this

Parents stick these on the fridge. Every visitor asks about them. It’s passive word-of-mouth that lasts months.

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What’s on the screen-free activity cards

All twenty activities are below, grouped the same way the cards are. Every one uses something you already own. Read them here, or print the cards for the fridge.

12 to 18 months

Short, repeatable, and mostly about the hands.

Spoon transfer: Two cups, one spoon, a handful of dry oats. Moving oats from cup to cup trains the wrist rotation that later shows up in self-feeding. Expect spills for the first week.
Sock basket: Tip a basket of clean socks on the floor and find the pairs together. Matching by colour comes before matching by size, so start with socks that look nothing alike.
Cupboard drum: An upturned pot and a wooden spoon. Loud, and the point is cause and effect: hit harder, hear more. Give it a fixed end, like when the song finishes.
Water pour: Two small jugs, an inch of water, a towel underneath. Pouring is the first task most toddlers will repeat twenty times without being asked.

18 to 24 months

Two-step instructions start landing around here.

Pasta threading: Dry penne and a shoelace with a knot in one end. Threading needs both hands doing different jobs at once, which is harder than it looks and worth the frustration.
Laundry colour sort: Three piles: darks, lights, everything else. A real job with a real result, which is why toddlers stay with it longer than a toy version.
Tape road: Masking tape on the floor in a long loop. Drive a car along it, walk it heel to toe, jump between the lines. One setup, three games.
Ice rescue: Freeze a few small toys in a tub of water. Warm water, a spoon, and patience get them out. Good for a hot afternoon and about twenty minutes of focus.

2 to 3 years

Pretend play arrives. Let it take over the activity.

Rice scoop bin: A deep tray of dry rice, cups, funnels, a small jug. The mess stays in the tray if the tray sits on a sheet. Scooping and pouring hold attention far longer than sorting at this age.
Sticker line-up: Draw a line across a page and put stickers on it. Peeling a sticker off the sheet is the actual skill, and it is genuinely difficult at two.
Paper tearing collage: Old magazines, a glue stick, one sheet of paper. Tearing uses both hands in opposition and needs no scissors supervision.
Cushion obstacle course: Sofa cushions on the floor as stepping stones. Add a rule as they get confident: only the blue ones, or backwards.

3 to 4 years

Questions get better than answers. Ask more than you tell.

Sink or float: A washing-up bowl and ten small objects. Guess first, then test. The guessing is the part that builds the thinking.
Nature scavenger hunt: Five things to find on a normal walk: something rough, something yellow, something smaller than a thumb. Works on the same street every time.
Button and coin sorting: A jar of mixed buttons and an ice cube tray. Let them choose the sorting rule rather than setting one. Explaining the rule afterwards is the language part.
Shadow drawing: A sunny window, a toy, and paper. Trace the shadow, then move the toy and trace again. The shadow changing is the whole lesson.

4 to 5 years

Long enough attention for something with steps.

Measuring cup baking: Any recipe where they own the measuring. Reading numbers off a cup and stopping at the line is early maths doing real work.
Map of the room: Draw the living room from above, furniture as boxes. Spatial reasoning, and it usually turns into a treasure hunt without prompting.
Story cubes: Six paper cubes with a drawing on each face. Roll three, tell the story that connects them. Keep the cubes; the stories change every time.
Sock puppet post office: A sock, a marker, and letters delivered around the house. Sustains pretend play for an hour and quietly practises names and letters.

Print the cards if you want them on the fridge. The activities work just as well read off this page.

Frequently asked questions

Are these activities really screen-free?

Yes. Every activity on these cards uses physical household items — spoons, cups, water, rice, socks, paper. No screens, no apps, no tablets involved. The activities are designed to replace screen time with hands-on play that builds real developmental skills.

What age range are the activity cards for?

The cards cover ages 1 through 5, with each card targeting a specific age group: 12–18 months, 18–24 months, 2–3 years, 3–4 years, and 4–5 years. Each activity is matched to the developmental stage of that age group, so the activities are appropriately challenging without being frustrating.

Can I share these with other parents?

Please do! These printables are completely free to download, print, and share. Print extras for friends, your playgroup, or your child’s daycare. The more parents who have easy access to screen-free activity ideas, the better.

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Two activities. Every morning.

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