NAPTIME PROBLEMS SOLVED (Part 2) — This Is How You Keep Them On Their Mats 

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Today is part 2 – of Nap-time problems SOLVED…

if you haven’t listened to Part 1– go back! It’s a short episode but you gotta hear the first part and then come back and press play here because I’m going to give you the rest of it today!

In Part 1, I told you how to set the stage…

I gave you specific things to do in your classroom so that your students will come in and feel calm and cozy and be ready to ACTUALLY SLEEP! WOO!

Today, we are going to keep going - and I’m going to tell you HOW you keep them ON their mats… 

No more bribing, no more threatening, no more losing your mind because you have kids crawling all over the room, messing with stuff on the shelves, NO MORE!!

The way that you keep them on their mats is that you have a chat with them and explain how it’s going to work:

You’re going to say “Look, I know that you guys don't like to lay on your mat. And you know what, I don't want you to lay there for a long time either.”

And they'll be so surprised by this. 

And then you explain to them, 

Here's the plan. 

“From now on, you're going to be able to get off your mats, and work on different activities. (or go to centers, or whatever you want it to be)…As long as you stay still nice and quiet on your mat for the first 20 minutes, you’re going to get to get up!! Does that sound good?”

And they're mainly going to hear the first part - you're going to be able to get off your mats, and they're gonna get excited about that.

Now they have something to look forward to!!!

Then, you back up and explain the specifics– you’re going to tell them what they have to do in order to be able to get off their mats.

Before, all they knew was - I have to lay there forever. And I hate this… But now you're putting an end in sight.

All you really want is for them to lay quietly for 20 or 30 minutes. 

Because they need to rest and you need to get some things done-

So by putting an end in sight you are changing the way they feel about nap-time.

You are removing the negative feelings around it.

They don’t feel like, “oh she’s forcing us to lay on our mats, I hate this!” 

Now they feel like, “oh wait, she’s on our team.. She wants us to be able to do fun things!”

So here's what happens:

They feel differently about the whole thing. Now they feel like if I just lay there for a little bit, I can get up.

And this feels manageable to them - so much so, that they will be able to relax. 

And the magic part… is that:

Most of them will now fall asleep. 

They don't have the worry and the panic that they had before. 

They're not working against you on the “nap-time mission” anymore…You guys are working together, they're gonna lay down and relax. 

And I'm telling you, most of your kids will fall asleep in those first 20 minutes. 

And now you're probably like what is about to happen here, they just all get up off their mats after 20 minutes??

Haha, no, I will walk you through it right now- 

I'm telling you, once we've flipped the way that we all feel about nap-time, you're gonna love the way this unfolds. 

You are in charge of the time (whether it's 20 minutes or 30 minutes, you decide when enough time has passed) to start getting kids up.

But remember, by this time, most kids will have fallen asleep. 

You'll have maybe 3 or 4 kids that are awake on their mats - you decide when the time is right, and you can start getting them up!

And this is something that I give a lot more detail about in the course I made for you, 🌿The Calm Classroom Course… But I'm going to try to give you the Cliff's Notes version here. 

You are going to be raising the bar – holding them to a higher standard and working TOGETHER to get them to this higher place…You are going to present them with fun things they will get to do, ONCE THEY SHOW YOU THEY ARE READY FOR THEM!

You are going to motivate them to use materials correctly and to show you how great they can listen SO THAT they get to do all the fun stuff.. They don’t want to miss out on the cool things you’re going to introduce to them… 

And in the case of nap-time, they don’t want to stay on their mats! They want to be on your team - TEAM GET ME OFF MY MAT! Woo-Hoo!!

You're giving them the option of getting off their mat early, which is something that they desperately want.

So they will do whatever they have to do to earn this special privilege…

And there’s a lot more that goes into it - so, if you have kids who aren't stepping up — you gotta let me give you the whole scoop. And that's what the course is for!

When you take 🌿The Calm Classroom Course, you can be sure you’ll get all the info so that you fully understand how to make each kid successful… (But for now, I don't have time to go into all of that, I'm going to try to give you a shortened version.)

So you've presented them with this special privilege that they want, and you make it clear to them what they have to do to earn it — they have to lay quietly on their mats, not talking to anyone around them, not touching anything on the shelves. 
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And those first few days of this especially, you're going to want to go around those first five or 10 minutes — and be kind of dramatic about how you're noticing what each child is doing.

And you're gonna give them praise and attention because they're naturally going to seek that out — We're gonna give to them. 

And once you do that the first few days you won't have to do it as much after that. But those first few days you want to walk around and:

• Let them feel your eyes on them.

• Wink at them.

• Give them a thumbs up.

• Give them feedback about what they're doing.

💚 So that they can rest assured as they're laying there, “I'm doing great.” And they're thinking to themselves about how excited they are to be getting off of their mats in a minute…

👀 They see you coming around and they know — “She's monitoring us, she's gonna let the kids who have been laying on their mats nice and still — get up in a little bit. I cannot wait to get off of my mat in a minute!”

✨They feel calm and at peace.

And they might be a little excited for that first 10 minutes.

But then the next 10 minutes or 15 minutes that go by, they start to feel a little sleepy, because they're relaxed, and they're calm.

And then they fall asleep. And you have time to get your stuff done.

Here’s a quick word from our sponsor and then, we’re gonna talk about exactly what it looks like when it’s time to get them off their mats!!

So, you decide when it's time for them to get up —

And remember, you've been keeping an eye on them so you know, all the kids who have been doing a great job.

And only about four of them are awake now —

but you know that they did what they needed to do. And they earned a special privilege of getting up early.

And that's important because once they earn the special thing, they aren't going to let misbehavior get in the way of them getting that thing. They aren't going to start messing around once they get off their mats, because they know that that's going to cause them to lose this special privilege that they just earned.

And this is big, you are going to be introducing it in a way that says, “I'm on your side, I want you to be able to do special things, I know that you're going to do great.”

Instead of “If you do that, I'm going to take things away!”

Do you see the difference there???

So if you have one or two kids that act like they don't care and they don't want to get off their mats… and they just keep messing around…

You need to go back to the point that I just made.

And you need to do some more work on the: “I'm on your side, I have fun things for you to do. And I want you to be able to do them, you are good at a lot of things, we are gonna have so much fun together!”

Your kids need to feel like you are on their side, you want them to get to do the fun stuff. And that you genuinely just are there to do what's good for them — you're not working against them.

If kids aren't jumping on the train with you for this— you’ve got to go back to that piece — and make it clear to them:

• We're on the same team

• I would love for you to be able to get up and do this activity.

You're building them up, because you don't want to take things away. You want to let them DO MORE! (As soon as they show you they can handle it!)

You want them to be great listeners and follow directions so that you can let them do more stuff! (And so you can let them off their mats during rest time without disrupting the kids are sleeping!)

You want to be able to let them work quietly with a partner on a puzzle while you finish your work and the other kids are sleeping…And so you set them up to be successful in whatever the task is. 

You have to decide, what am I going to let them do when they get up early?

For me, it was always:

I would go over to each individual kid. And I would help them get the sheet off their mat, and they would put it back in their nap-time bag. (Which would just be tucked under their mat while they're resting.)

Then, I would carry their mat to the hallway to be cleaned and stacked. And they would take their rest time bag with all their stuff back in it to their coat hook and hang it up. Then they wash their hands and sit quietly at the table to eat snack.

Snack is an easy first step for them to do quietly.

(*Because they're just sitting and eating and you can control the seating if you if you have to with placemats.)

And I would either have work set out from them that I wanted them to do or I’d let them go to centers.

They can pick a center that was going to be quieter and not near a child that was sleeping.

But really, they can be near kids who are sleeping because they're going to be quiet.

They're going to be superstars because they know that doing this special thing that they wanted to do.

Getting to sit and play with Magna-tiles or dolls is so much fun and I've made it clear to them: “I am so glad that you can to get up and play, I know you're going to be so quiet!”

It's just all positive, building them up, and preparing them to be awesome at whatever it is that you're having them do.

AND, I want to assure you - kids can be as quiet as you need them to be. It doesn't have to be something during this time where “Oh, man, they're getting a little noisy over there.” It's like, these kids are quiet as a mouse!

And you look at them, and you're like, “yes, this is awesome. I can't believe you were over there, you were being SO QUIET! You're gonna be able to do this every day.”

So always building them back up and making them successful.

I would have different lights around my room that I could turn on and kids could start to work in a certain area that was dark when the kids were all sleeping.

BUT you don’t just turn on the lights and say, “Nap-time is over! Everybody wake up.”

OMGosh— no, no — you slowly turn on lights as more children get up… You want to keep it calm by staggering how you're waking them up.

You can front load the activities to set them up for success.

• You could have them sit and listen to a book on tape, that's something that they won't make too much noise with.

• You can have them sit and work on an iPad for a small amount of time.

• You can have them play by themselves with a quiet activity that they don't need any help to do.

You'll find lots of fun stuff for them to do during this time.

To keep it SUPER SIMPLE: You could have a stack of coloring pages, and they just sit right at the table with you. You have three kids sitting there coloring nicely, while you're getting a few things done at the head of the table.

And then you could even teach them some silent signals, they love that kind of stuff…

You could teach them to raise their hand or use a hand signal if they want a drink of water. They love learning these little signals.

Think about how you can teach them little things that will make them more successful. What little tricks can you show them?Because kids love these kinds of tricks! They eat this stuff up.

Most of my kids would sleep almost that full hour once they fall asleep.

They're just tired. And so I would go around and start waking them up one by one… in the same way I did the other kids…I pull the sheet off and I would take their mat, they would take their sheet in their nap-time bag with whatever personal items they had — a blanket or a stuffed animal—hang it on their hooks and then wash their hands for snacks.

It is such a nice feeling to have a bunch of sleepy kids quietly eating snack, because they're just waking up from the great nap that they had.

And they're ready for this afternoon.

And you can talk with them about it to again reinforce the positive feelings: “It's so good that you slept a little bit, you're gonna have plenty of energy to play this afternoon!”

A lot of it is just flipping the whole “nap-time feel” to more positive.

Change the way they look at it, so they stop working against you.

Because once you guys can work together, it's gonna have a whole different feel.

Last Thing:

👉🏻BACK RUBBING COUPONS.

One more brilliant addition to nap-time for you...

What is a “back-rubbing coupon?”

It’s a coupon that kids can earn — and it meant that they could stay up off their mat for five minutes and rub another child's back.

Sounds like nothing,

but it is such a big deal for them.

So one or two kids might have said that they were going to cash in their back rubbing coupon on a certain day… And that means we all come in to lay down — and those two kids get to stay up off their mat.

This is where the huge deal is.

They don't want to lay down right away.

This feels so special to them.

And then they're gonna go sit and help you rub another child's back…

They're literally helping you put kids to sleep. 

And it's another thing where they're going to do it the right way. Because you're going to set them up for success BY:

• showing them what back rubbing looks like and let them practice (They just gently make circles on the child’s back)

• tell them to ask the kids before they start to rub their back - make sure that the other child gives them permission (or they can say “no thanks!”)

And then - lay down the rules:

-You're not talking to them!

-You're just sitting quietly. 

And then as they're doing that, I'm looking across the room and just like, “Wow, this is so cool. Look at you. Look at you, you're not even on your mat. This is so special.”

And they're like, “OMG, this is so special.”

IT’s OK if YOU’RE DOUBTING ME ON THIS…

AND I GET IT, I feel like if I was just explaining right now, without having seen it in action, I would be like, “I don't even know what is special about this.”

But this is SUCH A big deal for the kids.

If you're trying to motivate your kids to make good choices - use “back rubbing coupons” … as something that they can earn, however you want to do it.

I'll show you exactly how to do it my way in 🌿 The Calm Classroom Course. But you can also take it and make it your own.

It’s just — sometimes they actually put kids to sleep

and you're just sitting back like, “This is AWESOME.”

Everybody's winning right now.

So back rubbing coupons are another fun way to motivate kids to do awesome stuff, and help you to put the kids to sleep at rest time.

And they'll do it the right way.

Because it's so special.

They don't want to lose that chance to do that.

I hope that you have found today helpful and fun.

If you have questions for me, or you would like to know more about 🌿 The Calm Classroom Course — reach out to me!

Send me a message on Instagram!