Do you need a nap mat?

At their daycare and preschool, where they went from 24 months to almost age 5, my children were expected to nap on mats that were provided by the school. No, they didn’t look like the one pictured above. Probably something like this Kindermat.

Parents supplied a sheet and a blanket, and our daycare provider, god bless her, washed them each week. At the daycare Heather’s kids attended, after they graduated from crib napping, they brought their own sleeping bags, which parents had to bring home each Friday to wash for Monday morning.

Is a nap mat a thing your child needs?

I saw this one at a baby expo and thought it was totally adorable.

It rolls up and closes with Velcro strips that kids can handle. It’s totally lightweight. The soft blanket is attached to the side of the base layer, so it’s just one piece to keep track of. Very cute, Elonka Nichole. (See her Etsy shop here.)

After seeing this, I felt like I could make something like it, and remembered having pinned a nap mat made from three or four store-bought pillowcases sewn together.

If you are crafty, Prudent Baby, offers an amazing step-by-step tutorial for making a similar mat with beautiful finishes. This is hers:

Sadly, it has proved impossible to find the original source of this pillowcase idea. But for those of us who can only sew a straight line, it might be worth trying. Then again, it requires 4 or 5 pillows, so it might be a better thing to bust out on a rainy fort-building day.

What do you use for this napping-on-the-floor purpose? Or are you shaking your head, thinking, no freaking way my kid would settle down for a nap on a floor?

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Whitney

RookieMoms.com co-founder Whitney lives with her husband, son, and daughter in the San Francisco Bay Area where she writes about parenting, crafts, and activities that moms can do with babies in tow. She and Heather also publish 510Families.com, a site for East Bay parents.