Last week, both my children were sick with a bad cold, and as I felt myself coming down with the illness, too, I struggled to find ways to keep them occupied in a quiet way. I hate plopping them in front of the television, especially for several hours. Here are some ideas we came up with - but remember, sick children will only want to do one activity for a short amount of time before resting or moving on to something else:* Read. If your child is too young (or too sick) to read to himself, take breaks from your other responsibilities to read to him. Long, fascinating books work best - the kind your child hardly wants to put down. My four year old and I started reading C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew last week. It's the prequel to the Chronicles of Narnia books. If my voice would have held out, she'd have had me read it from start to finish in one sitting! * Listen. Bring a CD player into your child's room (if she doesn't already have one) and put on some good music or stories on CD. For Christmas, we put some Dollar Tree Bible story and devotional CDs into my daughter's stocking, and she spent quite a bit of time laying or sitting quietly in bed, listening to them. * Quiet Games. Quiet board games are another good choice, especially if your child isn't so ill he can't get out of bed. Puzzles work, too. New games - or games pulled out only when the children are ill - may keep your child occupied longer. * Drawing. Any sort of drawing or coloring works, but my four year old loves her Doodle Pro, which creates drawings on a special board, using a magnetic pen. Older children may also spend this time writing letters. * Collages. Even toddlers can take stickers and put them on a piece of paper. Preschoolers can take pictures you've cut out from magazines and use a glue stick to place them on construction paper. For older children, only their imagination and energy level is limiting. Other crafts, like beading, may work too, but try to keep supplies used and space needed to a minimum. Tr placing crafts or puzzles on baking trays so they can easily be set aside and come back to later. * Puppets. Whether your child makes the puppets or you buy some, hand and finger puppets make for excellent, quiet, immaginative play for young children. * Foil. Offer your child a piece of foil and see what they can make with it. A ball? A crown? A snake? Little foil people? * Rice or Bean Sandbox. For young children, fill a plastic storage tub with rice or beans and let them use it like a sandbox. * Paper Dolls. Remember paper dolls? Although it's uncommon to hear of children playing with them these days, they are still available and make an excellent sick-time activity for preschoolers through grade schoolers. You could also teach your child how to make a doll chain or paper snowflake. * Origami. Older children may enjoy learning origami while sick. * DVDs. In our household, this is a last resort, but truly, no child was ever hurt by watching one or two DVDs while they were ill. And with DVDs (as opposed to television), you can control exactly what they are watching and for how long.
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