Base your bedtime tips on facts and what you need to know about things like caffeine. In April I visited Dr. Meir Kryger to ask him all about sleep. The #1 fact Dr. Kryger wants families to know about sleep is in this blog post.

The #2 most important thing Dr. Kryger wants families to know about sleep?

Caffeine awareness.

Read more about how caffeine affects your sleep and overall health in this post from March – you really can’t be too caffeine aware when it comes to your health.

And when you download Sleepytime Club’s free Bedtime Blueprint here you’ll know exactly when to cut out caffeine, screen time, and when to start the family bedtime routine.  Big bedtime tip: Once your day is scheduled with an eye towards sleep, you’ll find tuck-in time is easy breezy…as it should be! Something to look forward to.

This week’s free coloring page and mp3 is the charming poem The Elf & the Dormouse by Oliver Herford. This story has captivated generations of children….and adults. Our guest artist is Doreen Mulryan. See her work HERE .

Download the recorded poem and coloring page HERE.

Secretly, I still think that the umbrella might have been invented by a creative and industrious elf…and I never looked at toadstools quite the same way after reading it.

We should enjoy poetry, stories, and songs for kids because they’re delightful. But when you read about how nutritious they are for our development – all the more reason to make exposure to good literature part of the bedtime routine. Here’s just one article out of many. The information about nursery rhymes and future readers will really knock your socks off!

For resources of poems to read to children, this post in Best Books for Kids has some excellent suggestions on top of citing why poetry is important.

What poems and stories still touch your view of the world? Please share below.

Download the Bedtime Blueprint for a helpful tool to help organize your days for peaceful, sleep-filled nights…including exactly when to cut out caffeine.