Offline.kids – Screen-free activities for kids
49 comments
·August 4, 2025advisedwang
EForEndeavour
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_subsets
>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.
woadwarrior01
The images are certainly GPT Image 1 generated. Also, the text on the about page is almost certainly AI generated.
tinier_subsets
I never fully believed the “em-dashes are an AI giveaway” meme — until I saw that front page.
eszed
I'm really sad about this, because I'm a word (and punctuation) nerd and use em-dashes in my own writing, because they're correct, dagnabit. Now I'm reconsidering the practice.
ascorbic
LLMs don't put spaces around their em-dashes.
bongodongobob
Looks exactly like images generated by M365 copilot if I don't ask for something specific.
ascorbic
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.
lynndotpy
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.
androng
all of the pictures are AI-generated, probably from GPT-image-1
sram1337
Some context from the dev's blog (https://highrise.digital/blog/building-offline-kids-a-direct...
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"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!"
DataDaoDe
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
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
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
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.
Leftb
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'.
EduardLev
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
throwanem
No one needs to hear their screen reader say "yellow squiggle."
topheroo
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).
pton_xd
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!
duxup
It's not like before AI we got a lot of genuine founder stories either ;)
TheRealPomax
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?
nemomarx
Fine for them, but why would I use it instead of using my own AI for my own kids?
It's like reading other people's chat gpt conversations, not very interesting or useful.
IshKebab
> So what if they used AI
It matters because it's a very strong signal of quality.
null
cush
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
beshrkayali
Quality, security, and code that doesn't fall apart later matter. I don't want AI slop children books to be a thing. I hear you on AI making it easier for people to build stuff, but calling valid concerns "gatekeeping" is a bit off.
With that said, I really like this site and the approach!
uoaei
The study linked in OP is already a clear counterexample to your point, though. It's clear from all the slop that quality control is low on the priority list of so-called "builders" using AI. They do the first 20% to get a mockup and then decide it's done.
RyanOD
It's funny to use the online to help us with activities our kids can do offline.
Triphibian
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."
crawsome
To think, it's possible this entire thing was vibe coded.
kfajdsl
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
zeld4
it should be a printable book.
null
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.