is that true? I thought communicating what a full-sight person would see is important. Accessibility isn't just about text. Closed-captions vs Subtitles.
fyi your (?) css is messed up for the 'Show activities by...' images on a viewport that's the size of a macbook pro 14" display split in half vertically
Very weird errors in the site, is this AI generated?
When you click on the 2 year old options, it says "6 Activities for Kids Aged 2" despite there being 19 shown, and the text begins "Nine-year-olds are full of ideas..."
It looks like most of the blog posts for the site were also generated by ChatGPT. In the most recent article [0], all of the provided links include "?utm_source=chatgpt.com"
In "How to Reduce Kids’ Screen Time – Without the Tantrums" [1], half of the expert quotes were misquoted or could not be confirmed.
The fact that 'join a X group/class/workshop' shows up so often does make this a lot less useful. When you're looking for "easy-to-set-up activities for kids of all ages" a sign up process with some external organization isn't really 'it'.
This looks like it could be really cool. However there are obvious mistakes pointed out by other comments which makes me distrust the content. I'm sure there are still good ideas in there, I just don't think they would be as creative as I would likr
Just put your kids outside. You don't need anything as a kid to start playing. We used sticks and mud and built ourselves houses and towns and had wars and put on plays and did everything under the sun without toys or anything.
Some trees and dirt will take you a long way providing thousands of hours of fun. As kids we found these big black horned beetles and started a beetle gladiator arena that kept us preoccupied for months at a time feeding and training our biggest beetles. Kids are very creative if you let them be.
Nice work on offline.kids and kudos for tackling screen-free play. I've been playing in a similar space. If you want something complementary for the inevitable “but why?” moments, you might like StudyTurtle Ask (https://studyturtle.com/ask). It’s a free, no-signup AI Q&A tuned for 3–9 year-olds with:
Strict age calibration (matching phrasing and examples to each developmental level)
Concrete analogies (“volcanoes are like shaken soda bottles”) and kitchen-table experiments you can actually do
"Within the last few weeks, Mark and I have built and launched Offline.Kids.
It’s a website to help parents reconnect with their kids and for kids to reconnect with the world around them.
Offline.Kids is directory of screen-free activities for all ages. Each activity is categorised so that parents can find appropriate activities for their situation.
For example, you can find:
quick, clean activities for a 6 year olds
outdoor kids activities that take 1-2 hours
low energy indoor crafts
We built the site off the back of our new directory landing page plugin (catchy name still in progress!). It instantly creates thousands of SEO friendly landing pages for the activities. It’s early days, but Google is successfully indexing the pages and we’ll see how the rankings change over time.
So, if you’re looking for screen-free activities for your kids, check out the website, and share with anyone you think might find it useful!"
Did anyone even review these AI generated posts before publishing? It's one thing to publish something you didn't write, but it's another thing to publish something you didn't even bother to read:
This activity for ages 3 to 10:
> Instructions
> 1. Clear a safe space in your home
> 2. Set up crawling sections under chairs
> 3. Create jumping stations with pillows
> 4. Make balance beams with rope
> 5. Design tunnels with boxes
First, you should not be leaving children unattended around string or rope (the materials listed here). It's negligent to have that absent from the safety tips, and it's concerning that knowledge is obscure enough that the text generator wouldn't provide a bullet point with that advice.
But also, how many people have a place where they can "Make balance beams with rope"? What low-to-the-floor fixtures do people commonly have with the sheer strength to make a tightrope for children to walk across?
Interestingly, for it being built as part of the promotional effort for the authors's LLM-based WordPress WWW-site generator that autocreates (in their promotional blurb's own words) thousands of topic pages instantly for search-engine "optimization", this has been submitted onto http://url.town as one of only two entries in that site's "Family" section. This promotion clearly worked.
Someone thinks they're really killing it with AI project, and that really bothers me. I'm pretty sure I don't want to see ANY AI unless it is labeled as such.
Site author here! Really interesting to read all of this feedback.
The site was built with WordPress using a tool that we've developed. It's been populated by me, using AI to help come up with activity ideas and the activity content. You should see the suggestions, content and images that don't make it through!
Ideally, this would all be community generated and made by humans, but I'm doing this on my own and I don't have the experience of all the activities. Using Ai was a way to get lots of activities on there quickly, to try to test the concept. I agree that in some cases the quality isn't up to scratch, and I appreciate some of the feedback, which I'll do my best to fix.
This is a personal project of mine, scratching my own itch as a parent who needs inspiration for what to do. I thought that it might be useful for others too.
20 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 50.3 ms ] threadWhen you click on the 2 year old options, it says "6 Activities for Kids Aged 2" despite there being 19 shown, and the text begins "Nine-year-olds are full of ideas..."
The images are good but kinda off... e.g. for https://offline.kids/activity/water-play-tub/ the kid and tub are floating in a even larger body of water, and for https://offline.kids/activity/fabric-sensory-tunnel/ there is a magical rigid blanket-tunnel.
In "How to Reduce Kids’ Screen Time – Without the Tantrums" [1], half of the expert quotes were misquoted or could not be confirmed.
[0] https://offline.kids/teaching-kids-to-lose-gracefully/ [1] https://offline.kids/how-to-reduce-kids-screen-time-without-...
There are plenty of examples where a screen provides a better and more enriching/edifying experience than dead trees, etc
Some trees and dirt will take you a long way providing thousands of hours of fun. As kids we found these big black horned beetles and started a beetle gladiator arena that kept us preoccupied for months at a time feeding and training our biggest beetles. Kids are very creative if you let them be.
We need Klutz to come back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klutz_Press
Strict age calibration (matching phrasing and examples to each developmental level)
Concrete analogies (“volcanoes are like shaken soda bottles”) and kitchen-table experiments you can actually do
---
"Within the last few weeks, Mark and I have built and launched Offline.Kids.
It’s a website to help parents reconnect with their kids and for kids to reconnect with the world around them.
Offline.Kids is directory of screen-free activities for all ages. Each activity is categorised so that parents can find appropriate activities for their situation.
For example, you can find:
quick, clean activities for a 6 year olds outdoor kids activities that take 1-2 hours low energy indoor crafts We built the site off the back of our new directory landing page plugin (catchy name still in progress!). It instantly creates thousands of SEO friendly landing pages for the activities. It’s early days, but Google is successfully indexing the pages and we’ll see how the rankings change over time.
So, if you’re looking for screen-free activities for your kids, check out the website, and share with anyone you think might find it useful!"
Did anyone even review these AI generated posts before publishing? It's one thing to publish something you didn't write, but it's another thing to publish something you didn't even bother to read:
This activity for ages 3 to 10:
> Instructions
> 1. Clear a safe space in your home
> 2. Set up crawling sections under chairs
> 3. Create jumping stations with pillows
> 4. Make balance beams with rope
> 5. Design tunnels with boxes
First, you should not be leaving children unattended around string or rope (the materials listed here). It's negligent to have that absent from the safety tips, and it's concerning that knowledge is obscure enough that the text generator wouldn't provide a bullet point with that advice.
But also, how many people have a place where they can "Make balance beams with rope"? What low-to-the-floor fixtures do people commonly have with the sheer strength to make a tightrope for children to walk across?
* https://highrise.digital/blog/building-offline-kids-a-direct...
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44765730#44782446
The site was built with WordPress using a tool that we've developed. It's been populated by me, using AI to help come up with activity ideas and the activity content. You should see the suggestions, content and images that don't make it through!
Ideally, this would all be community generated and made by humans, but I'm doing this on my own and I don't have the experience of all the activities. Using Ai was a way to get lots of activities on there quickly, to try to test the concept. I agree that in some cases the quality isn't up to scratch, and I appreciate some of the feedback, which I'll do my best to fix.
This is a personal project of mine, scratching my own itch as a parent who needs inspiration for what to do. I thought that it might be useful for others too.