Start Slow and Have A Visual Aid for Time- Your toddler is not going to play quietly for an hour all at once. Start with 15 to 20 minutes a day and work up from there.
Start Slow and Have A Visual Aid for Time- Young children have no real concept of time. I find toddler clocks can be really helpful for starting a quiet time practice. I love the My Tot Clock, (you can see my full review here) because it has 5 different colors that you can program for different things.
Start Slow and Have A Visual Aid for Time- Starting slow is key — if you set the clock for 10 minutes and your toddler successfully plays quietly for that whole time, then they will feel like they accomplished something. If you set it too long at first and they come out over and over — they will feel like they can’t play for that long on their own.
Have Ready to Go Activities- Okay, I know I said quiet time should be unstructured and ideally, it would be completely open, but that’s unrealistic for younger kids and when just starting out.
Have Ready to Go Activities- Vygotsky, a child psychologist, talks about how when something is challenging for a child you help to scaffold that behavior until they can do it themselves. Just like scaffolding can hold up a building before it can stand on its own.
Have Ready to Go Activities- You don’t build the building for them– you scaffold it. In this case, you don’t provide the entertainment, but you provide possibilities for entertainment.
Quiet Time Changes As Kids Grow- For younger kids, quiet time takes the place of naptime. But as kids get older and have long days at school and do more after-school activities, they need different types of quiet time.