When children are sick (or if Mama is sick) and the children need to be kept busy or in bed for long periods of time, it is easy to resort to screen time to make this happen. However, there are a couple problems with this. One, sometimes it doesn’t work, and the children can be loud, rambunctious, and running around even with a show on. Two, after the illness is over it can be difficult to wean the screen time back down. And three, there are a lot of dangers with screens (see our article about screen safety here!). So whether you are just looking for a way to keep screen time low during times of illness, or you want to get by without screens altogether, here are some ideas for you!
Screen Free Ideas for Sick Kids
Books
My favourite of our screen-free activities is reading books. We make reading a part of our routine every day, from homeschool time to quiet time. Sometimes we have audiobooks (The Yellow Fairy Book and BBC’s Winnie the Pooh are two of our favourites right now). With our public library card we are able to listen to five free audiobooks a month on Hoopa. There are also many free audiobooks online available through librivox.
Little Badger enjoys looking at picture books while the audiobook is playing, while Little Fox enjoys reading her own books at the same time.
Photos
How often do you go through your family’s photos? Pulling out our family’s photo books to enjoy flipping through is a great screen-free activity that works well with bed rest. My girls love looking at pictures of themselves and seeing what they were like as babies! They also enjoy looking at wedding photos here!
Toy Time
There are a couple of ways toys can be incorporated into bed rest time. First, have a tray and fill it with some of their figurine toys. This tray contains the activity and keeps them resting in bed. A second way is to have a special bin of toys that only come out for times of ailment. The last time the girls were sick we gave them each a new pouch of Pokémon cards to add to their Pokémon card binders. I keep a couple extra things on hand that we didn’t give them for their birthdays or St. Nicholas day, that can be brought out as something new for these sorts of occasions.
Quiet bins or quiet activity books are also a good option for occupying children. I prepared quiet activity bins for Little Fox to use when I was nursing Little Badger. Now I can take those same activities and give them to Little Badger! You can check out my old article on quiet toddler activities here.
Colouring is also a great activity that can be done in bed. For younger children, have some extra mess free colouring on hand. Older children may enjoy a special marker or pencil crayon set that only comes out while they are sick.
Making it Work
It can be difficult to stay in bed all day, especially for little toddlers. One thing I recommend is having a schedule set for yourself to switch up their activities every so often. (Medicine/Pharmaceuticals not listed on schedule, but you could add that to your own if that would help you) Here is an example schedule for us:
Wake up/bathroom/breakfast
Reading period
Rest in dark/extra nap if needed
Toy Period
Lunch
Nap
Photos/colouring/other
Supper
Screen Time (if they were good about resting in bed all day)
Find ways to reward their patience and obedience when they do rest well. Our family does allow for a little screen time (generally 3 or less days a week, and less than 7 hours overall) so when they are sick that is set up as their reward for keeping hydrated and staying in bed except for bathroom breaks.
If the girls aren’t doing well at resting and listening, then usually that means they have enough energy to do some homeschool work. If this is the case I keep it to reviewing concepts already learned. This review time is really beneficially because it is amazing how quickly material will be forgotten even over a week or two of break.
The Byzantine Life
Thank you for checking out this week’s article! We are still getting over colds at our house but are looking forward to feeling better soon. Today is also the Feast of the Presentation in the Temple so be sure to celebrate! If we didn’t get our tree down last night night, we’ll be doing it today.
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