Do these 10 Quiet activities instead of napping

“Why does my kid not nap during nap times!?”

As a parent, you know that getting your child to take a nap can sometimes be a struggle. However, children need to get enough rest to ensure that they stay healthy, happy, and alert throughout the day. But what do you do when your child just won’t nap? This is where our list of quiet activities comes in. These activities are not only calming and relaxing but can also stimulate your child’s imagination and creativity. So, whether your child is a toddler or a little older, we have some great activities for kid to help them relax, unwind and recharge their batteries without having to take a nap. So let’s get started!

1. Story Telling

Storytelling is not only a brilliant activity to do for kids during naptime but also turns out to be a great bonding session between them and their parents. Apart from that, here’s why you should encourage your kids to involve in storytelling.

• Storytelling truly allows you to understand a child’s mind and their thinking process. It helps in understanding their personality.
• It makes them more confident about expressing themselves in a creative manner.
• Storytelling is an efficient way of working on writing skills, sentence formation, and correct grammar usage.

2. Drawing

Drawing and coloring books are hands down the most fun, quiet activity for your child instead of napping. Drawing lets kids express their emotions & works on their fine motor skills. Here are some reasons why drawing is one of the best alternative activities during nap time.

• It encourages kids to be creative, use their imagination, and create something unique.
• Drawing and coloring demand precise finger movements and hand-eye coordination; this improves their visual perception.
• It is also a great activity for building up your child’s concentration during the process of paying attention to minute details in a drawing.
• Coloring allows children to make their decisions and gives them the freedom to create what they wish, building their self-esteem. 

3. Puzzles

Puzzles are engaging & screen free learning activities for your kid . Here is why you should get your child an age-appropriate puzzle set for naptime play.

• Solving puzzles helps exercise a child’s critical thinking, which in turn allows them to develop problem-solving skills.
• At this age, it becomes crucial for kids to involve in cognitive development activities for spatial awareness, memory, attention span, and concentration, and puzzles are the ones for it.
• Solving puzzles is quite an efficient and stress-unwinding activity for children as it is quite relaxing.

4. Building Blocks

It is a free, willing, and creative activity that allows a child to use their imagination, create, and showcase what they love with blocks.

• It develops spatial awareness as building with blocks teaches them about shapes and figures and how to fit different sizes in order to create something new. 
• Building blocks requires patience and persistence, and teaching them these important qualities is the most fun way.
• Building blocks could be played amongst friends who can help them develop social skills by incorporating other kids’ ideas, taking turns, and collaborating to build something.

5. Playdough

Playdough is one such activity that excites children the most and, honestly, a quiet creative alternative for nap time. Here’s why you should think of playdough as a naptime activity.

• Playdough activity requires a lot of rolling, pinching, and squeezing the dough with their fingers. This strengthens their hand and finger muscles, which tends to be crucial for handwriting stability development.
• As children, when they feel the dough, its texture, color, and smell, it helps them enhance their sensory perception and develop a sense of touch at an early age.
• You could really teach a child the sense of color matching and scenario making while they make characters or places using playdough. It is also a fun way of teaching colors to your toddlers. 

6. Listening To Music

You must indulge your kid in listening to music during naptime since it holds a lot of benefits for their development and well-being. Here is why listening to music is a good activity for children.

• Listening to music helps improve a child’s mood, prevents agitation, and increases happy pleasureful feelings.
• It is a wonderful way of introducing your kid to different cultures and traditions and making them open-minded toward the cultures of this world.
• Listening to music could make your child more socially active by growing particular interests and choices. It also helps in understanding their likes and dislikes, which says a lot about their personalities.

7. Quiet Games

Playing quiet games like Guess The Object, Who Am I, Thumb wrestle, etc  are all good activities instead of napping since it also allows you to strengthen your bond with your child. These can also played during roadtrips! 

• Quiet games where they have to guess the object or describe them allow them to improve their vocabulary.
• A child will learn observation skills during this process since they need to be aware of their surroundings and see details.
• Another such quiet game could be “I Spy,” which develops a sense of evaluating decisions in kids since it requires them to choose a different and good place to hide every time.     

8. Jigsaw Puzzles

Jigsaw puzzles are the most loved ones by children, and they also make for a good activity instead of napping. Here are a few ways in which your child can benefit from playing jigsaw puzzles.

• It is quite beneficial for enhancing memory since completing a jigsaw requires one to remember the whole piece before and then arranging them in the correct places.
• Jigsaw is a great way to develop the analytical thinking process as they need to figure out which piece goes first and where.
• It helps them gain control over their movement and teaches them to manage the small muscles of their hands.

9. Reading

This is one of a child’s most widely preferred quiet activities and could be practiced anytime. Hence, making it a perfect substitute for a nap. What makes reading a perfect quiet activity for toddlers during nap time is:

• Reading helps them better grasp language skills and expand their vocabulary. It also helps them become a good communicator since they learn sentence-building through reading.
• Reading is a great exercise for building up your child’s imagination.
• It is an excellent way of introducing your child to diverse topics. Be it about culture, countries, sports, or the possible hobbies they can take up, the list is endless. 

If reading does not align with your child or if they are too small to read, then you can easily substitute reading with audiobooks our reading out loud to them.

10. Sticker Books

This is a quiet, hassle-free option for kids to practice in place of napping. However, there are several benefits of having a sticker book as an activity to do for kids.

• It helps a child work on their attention to detail ability since a sticker book requires placing the stickers in the exact spot under a given boundary.
• The repetitive nature of peeling off stickers and pasting them under a boundary could end up taking your child to a calming and relaxing state.
• You can get number sticker books or word letter books for a fun aspect of learning various things as well.

There are a lot of quiet activities your child can do instead of napping, but these are the top 10 we could suggest for you. Moreover, it is important to note that every child is different, and one particular activity doesn’t need to work for all. Whereas some children enjoy the quiet activities, some would wish for something like building sand castles and playing planting with mud and all.