Quiet Time Activities – Making it Fun!

Quiet Time Activities – as toddlers get older, they grow out of needing their day-time sleep. However, quiet time is still an important part of the day. Older, school age children, can also benefit from some time-out. It is hard for children to settle down, especially if they have been running around playing or are excited for one reason or another.

A great way to calm things down is to play quiet games. We have compiled a list of activities that will help you introduce quite time at your house.

Reading

Reading is an excellent activity for quiet time. Even if your child cannot read yet, he can sit quietly and look at the pictures. Read to your child or have him read by himself. Offer a large selection of books for your child to read–if you don’t own many books, take a weekly trip to the library. Let your child select enough books for the week.

Art

Choose art activities your child can do by herself without much direction. Let your child color in books or draw pictures. Simple collage activities also work well. Offer craft activities that are appropriate for toddlers and older kids, such as making jewelry or painting pottery.

Activity Books

Offer your child age-appropriate activity books. In addition to coloring, activity books feature such games as connect the dots, color-by-number and mazes. Another type of activity book uses wipe-off markers so your child can practice writing letters or shapes.

Beading and Lacing

Your child can string beads onto a long string. Encourage her to come up with different patterns for the beads, such as alternating two reds, then two blues. This lets your child practice fine motor skills. Offer your child lacing boards, where she can run the lace through the holes in the board.

Computer Learning Games

Computer games can teach young children about letters, reading and counting. Though many games feature music and sounds, you can give your child earphones to turn this into a quiet time activity.

Quiet Time Boxes

Prepare quiet time boxes with different activities. For example, make one box that contains books and another that contains puzzles. Each day during quiet time, let your child select one box and work on the activities inside it. Create one box for each day of the week. Change activities regularly so your child does not get bored.

I Spy Bag

Create a special I Spy bag for each child. This activity is good for a child by himself or for a group of preschool children. To mkids activities in bundabergake a bag, you will need two felt squares of the same size. Cut one so that the center of it is an open square, and sew a clear plastic window in place over the opening. Stitch the two felt squares together on three sides. Fill the pocket between them about half full of clear plastic crystals (available from a craft store) and add a variety of small objects (nothing that will poke through the plastic) such as plastic frogs, alphabet letters, plastic animals and colored beads. Stitch the bag closed. Laminate a list of everything that is in the bag and attach it to the top with a piece of ribbon. Give one to each child, and let him see what he can find by peeking through the window in the bag.

Sorting Game

Preschoolers love to sort things, and being given a bunch of items to sort is a fun game for most children this age. Provide each child with items to sort, and tell them to sort the objects into piles. If the child has small plastic toys to sort, she can separate them by color, by type (dinosaur, pet, person) or by any other characteristic she wants. Children this age can also sort objects such as buttons and plastic insects. A group of children can compare how many different types of objects each child has or how many different piles each ends up with. The comparison makes it interesting, but avoid letting them get too excited about the objects or this quiet sorting game will become a noisy competition.

Quiet Game

Playing the Quiet Game teaches kids self-control while letting them have fun and learn cooperative play. This game is best played with a group, such as a preschool class. To play, have the children stand in a circle. One child (selected by the teacher for the first game) tosses a foam ball to a classmate, who must catch it and throw it to another classmate. All the children must remain in their original places, and no talking or noise is allowed. Anyone who misses the ball, talks or moves from her spot must sit down and is out of the game. The person left standing at the end is the winner and gets to go first the next time the game is played.

We grabbed these fabulous ideas from ehow.