Offline.kids – Screen-free activities for kids

by ascorbic • 12 months ago

131 72 12 months ago

throwanem5• 12 months ago

No one needs to hear their screen reader say "yellow squiggle."

topheroo• 12 months ago

I wonder how much of the site was AI-generated. The images definitely are (kids with different numbers of fingers from each other in the same picture lol).

TheRealPomax• 12 months ago

You could just have read the "about" page. Who cares if there's AI involved, this is a dad who made a thing for his own kids, and opened it up for everyone else. So what if they used AI if it does what they hoped it'd do and their kids like it?

cush4• 12 months ago

I feel while developers continue to spend their time and energy gatekeeping how people build things, AI is going to continue to enable those people to build what they want. You'd be surprised how little people care about how a product was built and just want it to do the things they need it to do.

The MySpace era internet where anyone can create a page is back and I'm here for it

pton_xd• 12 months ago

I really want the "Note from the Founder" to be fully AI generated too, image and everything. Our fully unauthentic web of the future has finally arrived!

valbaca• 12 months ago

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.

throwanem5• 12 months ago

Close your eyes. Imagine you are using your computer or phone, but that for tedious reasons you may only do so via the extremely lossy KVM that is me. Do you need to hear me say "yellow squiggle?"

The point of accessibility isn't an equivalent experience, which is trivially impossible in any case. The point is to make the material as useful, wherein possible. Especially when everything in the UI costs its user the time of its verbal description, "as useful" very often means ensuring the irrelevant is left out.

kfajdsl• 12 months ago

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

advisedwang• 12 months ago

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..."

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.

woadwarrior012• 12 months ago

The images are certainly GPT Image 1 generated. Also, the text on the about page is almost certainly AI generated.

bongodongobob• 12 months ago

Looks exactly like images generated by M365 copilot if I don't ask for something specific.

tinier_subsets2• 12 months ago

I never fully believed the “em-dashes are an AI giveaway” meme — until I saw that front page.

androng• 12 months ago

all of the pictures are AI-generated, probably from GPT-image-1

EForEndeavour• 12 months ago

Good catch. Yeah, definitely AI-generated. The text in the images are in that unmistakeable ChatGPT 4o image generation font that's weirdly kinda fat and oddly kerned.

On AI's struggles with hands: do humans have four or five fingers? Why not both!? https://offline.kids/activity/diy-jigsaw-puzzle/

tinier_subsets2• 12 months ago

On AI's struggles with hands: do humans have four or five fingers? Why not both!? https://offline.kids/activity/diy-jigsaw-puzzle/

You missed the puzzle itself, where it’s actually three fingers. Kind of impressive degree of inconsistency, honestly.

lynndotpy4• 12 months ago

The "illustration" on the front page absolutely smacks of the ai-generates aesthetic, and especially the illustrations in the "posts".

I don't understand what the point of this website is. It's disingenuous, shallow, and artificial. If someone wanted to outsource their relationship with their offspring to a text generator, why wouldn't they just go to ChatGPT directly?

I can't imagine there's much overlap between people who want their kids to have less screen-time, but also have no standards for what replaces the screen time.

ascorbic2• 12 months ago

The images are probably AI, but I don't think the site itself is. It's a WordPress site, and the about page says the author is a web designer and the link in the footer is to a WordPress agency.

nerevarthelame• 12 months ago

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.

[0] https://offline.kids/teaching-kids-to-lose-gracefully/ [1] https://offline.kids/how-to-reduce-kids-screen-time-without-...

RyanOD2• 12 months ago

It's funny to use the online to help us with activities our kids can do offline.

Triphibian• 12 months ago

Phone obsessed parent looking at website while kids stand with rocks in hand by lake, not knowing what to do. "It says you throw the rocks into the water and have fun."

RyanOD2• 12 months ago

Too funny.

"Wait, wait, Steven...there is an app I can download that will let me track your stone skipping attempts to ensure you are trending toward an optimal stone choice, angle of attack, and release velocity..."

wintermutestwin• 12 months ago

Can we please stop using “screens” as a pejorative?

There are plenty of examples where a screen provides a better and more enriching/edifying experience than dead trees, etc

cush4• 12 months ago

Where do you see "screens" used in the pejorative?

IshKebab4• 12 months ago

On the linked page:

Discover simple, screen-free activities

The implication that screens are bad is obvious to normal people.

The evidence is less clear: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9d0l40v551o

vouaobrasil2• 12 months ago

It's true that screens are helpful. But at least in many cases, they are making life worse. It's not that there aren't benefits, but in many specific domains, the negatives outweight the positives. This is true for children because they no longer have mental space to think for themselves, and it is true for many adults as well who spend 8+ hours in front of them. It might make the enterprises they work for more efficient, but it doesn't necessarily make the work enviroment better.

So I think there is sense to use "screens" in the pejorative sense. They are quite irritiating.

tstrimple2• 12 months ago

The misattribution to screens instead of antisocial behavior is what's making things worse. My children are fine despite having basically unlimited "screen" time. It's not my fault other parent's are incapable of parenting and rely on heavy handed legislation to protect their children from themselves. My children's lives are richer for having those "screens". They are far more curious and explore more than many of their peers do thanks to them. I think the pejorative of "screens" is far better spelled as "bad parents". But bad parents won't ever acknowledge that. Especially bad parents on HN thanks to Dunning-Kruger.

It's quite frankly ridiculous that people who associate with "hackers" want to isolate their children socially and technologically until some magical time that their mind is ready for controversy. As if the generations most capable of "hacking" weren't doing things far beyond their parent's understanding. Half the "hackers" here wouldn't be a fraction as successful if the censorship and restricted access they wanted were present when they were kids. Ladder pullers are some of the worst people in society.

zeld4• 12 months ago

it should be a printable book.

Leftb• 12 months ago

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'.

footlose_3815• 12 months ago

To think, it's possible this entire thing was vibe coded.

joewhale• 12 months ago

it 100% was. i wonder in 2-3 years if it will start being harder to tell.

throwanem5• 12 months ago

It is already pretty hard to tell.

EduardLev• 12 months ago

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

DataDaoDe• 12 months ago

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.

hnlmorg• 12 months ago

Exactly this.

We have so many outdoor toys from footballs and outdoor table tennis tables, to outdoor chalk, sand pits and so on and so forth.

Yet most of the time the boys just want water fights and the girls just want to do cartwheels.

Structured play is definitely important. But unstructured play even more so. It’s amazing what kids can find to entertain themselves when they’re left alone.

percentcer• 12 months ago

Predatory AI-generated site feeding off parents' anti-screen anxiety, no thanks.

We need Klutz to come back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klutz_Press

ravenstine• 12 months ago

I remember having the juggling one! Thanks for reminding me of Klutz. I'm hoping to finally have kids in the near future and, while I don't want to completely shield them from all tech, I do want to ground them in reality with "real" activities. I may order a bunch of their books in the future.

toisanji2• 12 months ago

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

lynndotpy4• 12 months ago

This is just an AI generate advertisement in the comments for a link to an AI generated site.

toisanji2• 12 months ago

i wrote it...

sram1337• 12 months ago

Some context from the dev's blog (https://highrise.digital/blog/building-offline-kids-a-direct...

---

"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!"

lynndotpy4• 12 months ago

https://offline.kids/activity/indoor-obstacle-course/

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?

JdeBP• 12 months ago

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.

* https://highrise.digital/blog/building-offline-kids-a-direct...

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44765730#44782446

aklemm• 12 months ago

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.

keithdevon• 12 months ago

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.

Offline.kids – Screen-free activities for kids

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