A Fine Parent

A Life Skills Blog Exclusively For Parents

About Jean Van’t Hul

Jean Van’t Hul is the founder of The Artful Parent blog, where you can find easy and fun art activities for your kids, as well as the author of multiple books on kids’ art and creativity, including The Artful Parent: Simple Ways to Fill Your Family’s Life with Art and Creativity and a brand new activity book for kids, Invitation to Draw: 99 Drawing Prompts to Inspire Kids Creativity.

10 Creative Quiet-Time Activities Your Kids Will Love

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(This article is part of the Positive Parenting FAQ series. Get free article updates here.)

10-quiet-time-activities-your-kids-will-love-main.jpgAs parents, we all need some good quiet time activities up our sleeve to pull out throughout the week—simple activities that will keep the kids engaged, creative, and yes, calm and quiet.

Activities like these come in handy in all sorts of situations and times.

To keep kids quietly engaged…

  • When the baby goes down for a nap
  • During travel, whether it’s a road trip or plane ride
  • When you are in a meeting
  • When the kids wake up early on the weekend and you’d rather stay in bed for another half hour
  • When you have a friend over

To help with transition times throughout the day and week. A low-key creative activity can do wonders for smoothing over the sometimes difficult transitions that happen throughout the day and week. These can include:

  • After school
  • Dinner prep hour
  • After nap
  • Before bed
  • After waking up

To help with waiting times at restaurants, coffee shops, or doctor’s offices.

To calm kids, keep the peace, and manage energy swings or potential conflict between kids during playdates or sibling situations. (I always tried to have at least one good quiet-time activity up my sleeve to keep playdates going smoothly when the kids were young).

There are so many times and places where we parents could use quiet-time activities as part of our parenting toolbox! The trick is having some good ones at the ready when we need them so that we don’t resort to screen time yet again (and end up feeling guilty).

I’m going to share my top 10 favorite quiet-time activities for kids. These are creative activities that will engage your kids yet they are simple to set up, they are quiet, and they are low mess. What’s not to like?! Plus most of these activities require minimal explanation or supervision. [Read more…]