Parenting expert, Jo Frost and the Booktrust have put together a guide of simple steps for bedtime: Bath, book, bed. You can read it here. 

I think everyone already knows how important routines are for children, especially young children.

We start the bedtime routine at about 18:30. First a bath, I find it easier to bath all 3 of them together. The quite enjoy the bath, pouring water between stacking cups and jugs.

Having 3 bookworms, story time is often much longer than anticipated, “Just one more story pleeeaaasssseeee”.

The Booktrust sent us 3 new bedtime books:

Baby Sparkle: Bedtime by Dorling Kindersley

Megan enjoyed this book, I read it to her, as did Josh, he felt quite proud of himself that he had read her a story. Usually, its just me that does the reading, but in the Booktrust booklet, Jo Frost suggest getting older siblings to read to younger children so that they can all be involved in the same book.

Hush… Little Bear is Sleeping: A press and listen book by Surya Sajnani

I loved the illustrations in this book, they are so simple, yet so pleasing to the eye. The kids got a bit excited with this book, they loved pressing and listening to the animal sounds.

And finally:

Quiet! by Kate Alizadeh

Kate was most interested in this book, the following day, you could watch her carefully listening and trying to make out what strange noises were.

We are very lucky and most nights bedtime is usually uneventful, but every few weeks we have one of those nights….Those nights that the blankets too hot, they need the loo, they thirsty, there is a monster behind the curtain, their favourite toy is missing, etc.

We already have a fairly good bedtime routine but I found the booklet informative and reassuring. Most evenings we already have a bedtime story.  It is one of Josh’s favourite times of the day. Now that he is learning to read I often point out words that he knows and he feels quite proud when he manages a “tricky word”.