Crafts help kids focus their energy and attention into productive activities. Being creative can give kids the opportunity to sit and wind down after a busy or exciting day. Help kids complete bedtime crafts and decorate their rooms with their creations to make bedtime more fun and maybe even get them excited about the notion of going to bed.
Bedtime Story Bookmark
Many children enjoy reading stories at bedtime. Help your child design a bookmark based on her favorite bedtime story. Give her a book that she loves, a rectangular strip of card stock and crayons so she can decorate the bookmark for her book. Laminate it with a laminating machine or cover it with a piece of contact paper. Punch a hole in the top of the bookmark to add ribbons, tassels or other decorations. These bookmarks make cute slumber party projects that children can take home with them.
Nighttime Mobile
Bring a favorite childhood poem or nursery rhyme into a child’s room by helping him make a mobile. Use any nursery rhyme with a bedtime theme, such as Wynken, Blynken and Nod or Hey Diddle Diddle. Help the child look through magazines and coloring books or on the Internet for images to print that relate to the poem or nursery rhyme. For example, a Wynken, Blynken and Nod mobile might have three children fishing, a smiling moon, a wooden shoe and a fish. For Hey Diddle Diddle, you would look for a cat, a fiddle, a dog, a moon, a dish and a spoon.
Allow the child to cut out and decorate the images as they desire. Tape strips of yarn to the backs of the images and hang them on a decorated clothes hanger. Use a screw hook in the ceiling to hang the mobile. Make it a bedtime routine to recite the poem or nursery rhyme together.
Bedtime Routine Chart
Getting kids into a bedtime routine can help make the entire process go more smoothly for the whole family every night. Some parts of your bedtime routine might include having a snack, taking a bath, getting into pajamas, brushing teeth and a reading bedtime story. Make a bedtime routine chart together so you can use it every night. Cut out a piece of card stock and cut it into an arrow shape, approximately 3 inches long. Place the arrow in the center of a paper plate or a large cardboard circle and push a page fastener through it, spreading the fasteners in the back of the plate. You’ll be able to spin the arrow like the hand on a clock. Have the child cut out and paste images or words around the edges of the plate that represent the tasks she has to do before bedtime. Hang it somewhere so that at bedtime you can move the arrow from one task to the other as you go through your bedtime routine.
