How To Establish The Perfect Quiet Time Routine

As a work-at-home-mom, it’s imperative that you carve out times to focus on your projects. Granted, there will be days where a sick kiddo, field trip or other issue results in you burning the midnight oil. Thankfully, establishing a reasonably predictable schedule will go a long way in helping your business and your sanity.

A great way to get some time to work is to start a regular quiet time for your kids. As Self Growth notes, quiet time involves your kids hanging out by themselves and doing a low-key activity that won’t overstimulate their minds. In most cases, this means tablets and TVs are off and books are open—as are the boxes of Lego and the bins of arts and crafts materials.

Benefits of Quiet Time

Quiet time is great for kids of all ages for a variety of reasons. In addition to helping boost their self-confidence, children often learn to solve problems on their own during this time. They can be endlessly creative, have time to reflect, think and imagine and have some time off from the things in life that stress them out. And of course, as a WAHM, having a predictable time every day when your kids are quietly and calmly occupied will give you the chance to catch up on emails or make some important phone calls.

In order for quiet time to be successful, it’s important to have plenty of relaxing and engaging activities for your kids to do.

Word Puzzles & Other Printouts

A terrific quiet-time activity that will also help your kids with their spelling skills are word searches. Most kids adore finding words in a jumble of letters. You can either pick up some word puzzle books at the store or make your own. For example, the Busy Teacher website is a great source of free word search templates that you can make for your kids. You can make them extra fun by adding in names of their stuffed animals, teachers and/or friends, or you can even up the educational ante a bit and use their sight or spelling words from school. Keep the puzzles and a few pencils in a basket and let your kiddo choose which ones they want to do. You can also print out outlines of images that they can color. Google favorite characters, animals, and foods and “coloring pages” and chances are good you’ll find plenty of choices.

Create an Activity Box

Another effective way to keep your kids happily occupied is with an activity box. This a special box that is only available to them during quiet time. Kids Activities has a terrific list of items that are ideal for the box—it includes stickers, a small flashlight, cars, a mini whiteboard and dry erase markers, crayons, pipe cleaners and much more. You can either let your kids take one or two items out at a time or if they are older see how they can combine several of the goodies into one cool activity. Rotate the toys in the box frequently so your kids will discover new things and be eager to play with the items.

Books & More Books

Reading is a perfect quiet time activity. Be sure your child has access to several age-appropriate books that match his or her reading skills. You can visit the local library for new selections and, like the activity box, rotate the books that are available. You can also add blank paper and pens to the mix and suggest that your kiddo write and illustrate a book.

How do you keep your kids busy while working?

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