Screen-free activities for 5 year olds (the year before school)

The best screen-free activities for a five year old lean into the leap they are making towards school: cooperative pretend play with a proper storyline, games with rules you can win or lose, early writing and drawing, and bigger physical challenges that test their balance and nerve. A five year old can follow a few steps, play a real game with other children and stay with a project they care about, so you can hand over more and hover less. You do not need a plan or a craft cupboard. You need ten minutes and whatever is already in the house.

Here are activities that suit where a five year old is up to, grouped by the kind of play, with the research on why each one earns its place.

What is different about play at five

A five year old is on the edge of school, and it shows in their play. Australia’s Raising Children Network notes that around four to five a child “loves make-believe play,” “tries to get along with others, cooperates, says sorry and agrees to rules,” can “cut with child-safe scissors,” “do up buttons and write their first name and some letters,” count to ten, and “follow multi-step, complex instructions.” They are talking in longer sentences, telling stories and keen to do real things for themselves.

That shift, towards cooperating, following rules and having a proper go, changes what holds their attention. The activities below are built around it, so they suit a five year old better than something pitched at a younger child. And none of it is a race to get them reading before term one. In Australia, the pre-school year runs on play-based learning for a reason: at this age, play is how the learning goes in.

Cooperative pretend play with a storyline

At five, make-believe has a plot, a cast and rules the children make up as they go. This is also where they practise the hard social skills, taking turns, sorting out a disagreement, sticking to the story someone else started.

Run a shop or a café together. Pantry tins, paper money, a notepad for orders. They price, you buy, then you swap. Counting, talking and taking turns, all built in.
A post office. They write “letters” (any scribble counts), stamp them, sort them and deliver them around the house. Early writing dressed up as a job.
Small-world worlds. A shoebox, some little figures, a few bits of fabric. At five they will build a whole scenario and narrate it for twenty minutes.
Dress-ups with a mission. Not just a costume, a quest. The explorer has to find three treasures. The vet has a waiting room full of sick teddies.

Games with real rules, winning and losing

Five is the age when agreeing on rules clicks, which Raising Children Network lists as normal development now. Simple games are a gentle way to practise the thing that stings most at this age: losing, and having another go anyway.

Snap, memory and simple card games. Quick rounds, clear rules, easy to lose gracefully when the round is short.
A board game you make. Draw a winding track on paper, roll a die, move a counter. They can help design it, which is half the fun.
Treasure hunt with clues. Hide five things, write a clue for each. The reading and the searching stretch their thinking.
Skittles or ten-pin. Empty bottles, a ball, count what falls and keep score. Movement and early maths together.

Early writing, drawing and telling stories

A five year old’s hands are getting ready for a pencil, and the best preparation is not a worksheet. It is cutting, drawing, threading and plenty of mucking about with mark-making.

Make a book. Fold a few pages, they draw the pictures and “write” the words, you scribe the bits they dictate. Then they read it to you.
Draw a person, properly. At five many children can do detailed drawings of people with body parts and clothes. Ask them to draw the whole family and tell you about each one.
Name practice, the sneaky way. Write their name in dots to trace, or in chalk outside to walk along. Short and playful beats a page of lines.
Cut and stick a collage. Child-safe scissors, old magazines, a glue stick. Cutting is brilliant for the little hand muscles, so let it be messy.

If you want more on the hands behind the writing, we have a whole guide to building your child’s fine motor skills through play. And reading together is still the single best quiet activity there is, for exactly the reasons in does reading aloud really make a difference.

Early maths, hidden in play

By five, many children count to ten and know numbers out of order. You grow the next bit through play, not flashcards.

Cooking something simple. Counting scoops, measuring, halving a banana. Maths you can eat.
Sorting and patterning. Buttons, pegs, pasta. Make a pattern, they copy it, then they make one for you.
Shop with real coins. Price a few toys in single cents, give them a handful of coins and let them pay. Handling money is maths with stakes.
Dominoes. Matching dots is counting and pattern-spotting in disguise.

Getting outside and testing themselves

Five year olds need a surprising amount of movement to feel settled, and they are ready for bigger physical challenges now. Australia’s movement guidelines for the under-fives recommend children aged three to five get at least 180 minutes of physical activity across the day, with at least 60 minutes of that energetic play. Outside is the easiest way to get there.

A proper obstacle course. Balance along the beam, crawl under the chair, hop the chalk squares, throw a ball in the bucket. Let them design the next one.
Learning to skip or ride. Five is often when skipping, scooting and pedalling click. Frustrating, then thrilling, and great for sticking at something hard.
Nature scavenger hunt. Something rough, something that was alive, something smaller than their thumb. Looking closely is its own skill.
Big ball games. Throwing, catching and kicking are all coming together now. Keep a tally and they will play for ages.

How to stretch an activity, and when to step back

The activity matters less than how you hold it. A few small things turn ten minutes into half an hour.

Follow their lead. If the café becomes a spaceship canteen, order the moon soup.
Add one twist. When interest dips, add a prop, a rule or a second player. One new thing buys another burst.
Let them do the hard bit. The wobble on the beam and the fumble with scissors is the learning. Sit on your hands and let them work it out. We wrote about why the hard bit is the point.
Keep screens in proportion. The same guidelines suggest no more than one hour of sedentary screen time a day at this age, so a hands-on activity beats a tap-and-scroll one most afternoons.

Why this matters more than it used to

Screen-free play at five is not about filling time before school starts. It grows the human strengths a screen cannot teach: attention, curiosity, the nerve to lose and try again, and hands that know how things work. Those are exactly the strengths that will matter most as our kids grow up alongside AI, when so much of the knowing and the fast-making will be done for them. If you want the bigger picture, here are the eight human skills your child needs in an AI world.

Frequently asked questions

What are good screen-free activities for a 5 year old indoors? Cooperative pretend play like a shop, café or post office, card and memory games, making a book, drawing, cutting and sticking, cooking something simple and sorting games all work indoors with things already in the house.

How long can a 5 year old concentrate for? Longer than a four year old, especially on their own ideas. A five year old will often stay with a project they chose for fifteen to twenty minutes, and less with something you have set. Rotating through a couple of activities is still normal.

What screen-free activities help get a 5 year old ready for school? Play that builds the pre-school groundwork, early writing and drawing, counting and patterning, taking turns, following a few steps and sticking with something hard. Play-based learning is how the pre-school year works in Australia, so the best preparation looks a lot like good play, not worksheets.

How much physical activity does a 5 year old need each day? Australia’s movement guidelines recommend at least 180 minutes of physical activity a day for three to five year olds, including at least 60 minutes of energetic play. Outdoor play is the easiest way to reach it.

Choosing the right little activity every single day is the part that wears parents out. That is exactly what Mini Brains Play does for you: ten minutes a day of real, screen-free play for three to five year olds, planned and ready in a tap. Download it on the App Store and start today.