Quiet Time Bins

I saw this blog post the other day and instantly knew I needed to implement this idea immediately! I've tried quiet time on and off with Shane, but it has always been a struggle or he just plan isn't quiet, so the idea of it kinda fell by the wayside. But for him and myself I think that quiet time is so important. He rests his body and I get a break from the million questions and "watch this" he says all day long. That was why I knew the quiet bins would help solve this problem.

I made 7 bins, one for each day of the week. I averaged about 6+ activities in each bin. Right now I aim for 1 hour in his room for quiet time. He can play with his quiet bin, read books or rest on his bed. All other toys are off limits during quiet time. I also often give him his afternoon snack during this time as well. And at the end of quiet time he must clean up the bin.

Below are the bins I made and what I have in each one. Note that we are super blessed to have a Grandma that just retired from being a 1st grade teacher. We were showered with all kinds of awesome things from Grandma Booth's classroom (Thanks, Jeni!!). Many of them ended up working perfect in the quiet time bin. Plus, I have lots of other things I can rotate into the bins in a month or so when he gets bored of the activities. I also pulled from his busy bag stash that I made a couple years ago.

The only money I spent was to buy the bins. A $1.25 each for 5 of the bins and $4.99 each for 2 of the bins (I wanted a size that would hold a couple larger items like puzzles and geo boards). It took me about 1 hour to complete this project. And so far the last 4 days of quiet time has gone great!!! I have found it very interesting what he actually does with the stuff in the bin. It's not always what it was intended for, but he is a happy kid playing in there with his quiet time bins.Today he actually BEGGED for his quiet time bin!

 This bin has: lace up trucks, magnetic boy/clothes, alphabet busy bag, small car, geography flashcards, animal/word matching cards, and a cup/clothes pins.

This bin has: animal flash cards, coloring book/markers, sorting busy bag, magnetic/magnetic balls and paper clips, shapes/color flash cards, puzzle and dominoes.

 This bin has: play money, National Geographic Little Kids magazines, his rock collection, laminated butterfly mazes/dry erase marker, magnetic alphabet set, puzzle and color/word recognition game.

 This bin has: dinosaur flash cards, coloring paper/crayons, puzzle, opposite match-up game, barrel of monkeys and a collection of stamps.

 This bin has: farm stickers/farm sheet, doodle book/fun color pin, bag of colored people/dinosaurs, pad of paper, matching game from a busy bag and puzzle.

 This bin has: geo board/rubber bands, sticker book/stickers, picture boards/shapes, buttons with a string and scoops. 

This bin has: tangrams, sorting busy bag, space flashcards, pad of paper/markers, full size puzzle, clock, car and number game.

Here they are all labeled and stacked in his closet. Ah....looking at them just makes me happy.

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