Christmas Quiet Time Bags

Both of my kids gave up naps when they were still pretty young.  With my oldest I lucked out; she was content to play with some of her toys in her room for a half hour, with momma checking on her every so often.  It wasn’t a nap, but at least she had “quiet time” and that helped some.  And since her baby brother still napped then, I got a half hour to myself each day.

Then the youngest gave up naps.

He thought it was way too fun to keep leaving his room during quiet time…  Which meant I spent my half hour putting him back in his room over and over and over again.

Something had to change.  Thankfully I stumbled upon the idea of quiet time bags/boxes!

That’s a whole post in itself.  Our quiet time bags and boxes (we have some of each, whatever the items fit best in) have evolved over the time that we have had them.  But today I want to show off the Christmas quiet time bags I’ve started!

I have to thank my son for the idea, really…  At Halloween time  (the day before Halloween) he asked for a Halloween quiet time box.  Momma couldn’t pull that off in such short notice!  But I did come up with a very small one for Thanksgiving and started thinking of what could go in a Christmas one.

I opted to make 2, to eliminate squabbles over who gets the Christmas bag each day.

Since this momma is cheap thrifty,  I just used gallon-sized zipper food bags for the Christmas quiet time bags.  (For our other quiet time bags I have reused zipper bags that toys have come in, and even one from a set of sheets.)

The first bag has a maze from a Christmas coloring book (I glued it to cardboard to help it last; they can use their finger to do it.), a felt tree with tiny pom-poms and felt “ornaments” to decorate it with, a puzzle made out of an old Christmas card, and 2 small Dora ornaments.  There is also a homemade memory game using Christmas stickers (click here for how to make your own) and a set of “presents” drawn on cardstock with the numbers 1-12 for them to put in order.

The second bag contains a set of stacking boxes that can be put together to make Santa, a cardboard “pie” to be put back together, a small Christmas board book, and a snowflake matching game. (Once again that Christmas coloring book was handy!)  There is a snowman from the same coloring book that I glued to cardboard and made construction paper pieces for so they could create their own snowman.  Thinking of my oldest, I included the start of what my mom always called a “God’s eye” ornament, where you wrap yarn around 2 craft sticks.  Finally, there is a red baby sock, stuffed with cotton balls to pull out and then “stuff the stocking” again.

I was pretty happy with the bags when I finished putting them together last night.  I figured I could add to them as other ideas pop into my head…

This morning one of the bags acquired 2 Christmas finger puppets I forgot we had and later found in a box of Christmas stuff.  The other bag got a cardboard lacing tree.  All you need is a piece of cardboard cut into a triangle.   (You can’t tell, but I colored it green and added a few ornaments with crayon.)  Punch holes along both sides of the tree and add a piece of yarn to thread through the holes like garland. 

So, since I’d love to add a few other items to keep them interested (and busy) with their new Christmas quiet time bags, what would you include?

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