When the baby wakes and the night stretches long, these twenty-five screen-free ideas keep your toddler calm, engaged and genuinely looked after, without a single glowing rectangle in sight.
The short, honest answer every exhausted parent deserves first: yes, you can keep a toddler meaningfully occupied at night without screens, and the activities that work best are quieter, simpler and less demanding of you than you might fear. Soft tactile play, a small wooden puzzle, a tray of sorted buttons, a whispered story about a toy rabbit: these are not consolation prizes for the absence of a tablet. They are, as researchers including Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff have long argued, the very experiences that build the self-regulation, language and executive function a toddler's brain is actively constructing. Night-time is not wasted time.
The second thing worth saying plainly: in a mixed-age household, the child who is not the baby still needs tending, and tending well. The goal on a broken night is not to occupy your toddler cheaply so you can focus entirely on the infant. It is to give them something genuinely absorbing, appropriately calm and suited to their developmental stage, so that both children feel held, even if you are physically in two places at once. The twenty-five ideas below are organised by type, because some nights call for solitary sensory play and others call for sitting beside each other on the sofa, quietly sorting shapes.
Toddlers who are woken or kept awake by a newborn sibling are not simply inconvenienced. They are operating with reduced prefrontal capacity, which is the part of the brain that manages impulse control and emotional regulation. Adele Diamond's research into executive function development makes clear that young children under stress, including the low-grade stress of disrupted sleep, need environmental scaffolding rather than open-ended demands. In plain terms: a toddler at midnight cannot regulate themselves without help from their surroundings. A calm, dim, quiet play space with a familiar, manageable toy does some of that regulating for them.
What the research says about play and self-regulation
Psychologist Jaak Panksepp identified the PLAY system as one of the brain's primary emotional circuits, active even in conditions of fatigue and mild distress. Calm, freely chosen play, particularly with open-ended objects, helps downregulate the stress response in young children, making it genuinely therapeutic rather than merely distracting on a difficult night.
Choose a single corner of a room close enough to the baby's space that you can hear both children, but not so close that the toddler's movements disturb the infant. A dim lamp rather than overhead lighting signals to the toddler's circadian system that this is still night. Gather five or six items into a low tray or basket before bedtime each evening, rotating them weekly so they feel fresh. Familiar toys feel safe; unfamiliar ones create arousal. The basket itself becomes a cue, a small ritual that says: this is what we do when the baby needs Mummy or Daddy.
1. Fabric sorting. A small basket of fabric scraps in different textures: velvet, cotton, corduroy. Ask your toddler to sort them into rough and smooth piles.
2. Rice tray tracing. A shallow tray of uncooked rice with a finger-drawn letter or shape, then smoothed and redrawn. Absorbing, near-silent and endlessly repeatable.
3. Threading large wooden beads. A classic fine-motor activity that demands enough concentration to quieten a restless mind without requiring parental input.
4. Playdough without tools. A ball of homemade playdough, nothing else. The absence of cutters and rollers slows the play down and deepens the sensory immersion.
5. Coin posting into a slot. A clean plastic tub with a slit cut in the lid and a handful of large, safe tokens. The repetitive posting motion is quietly mesmerising.
6. Pebble or shell arranging. A collection of smooth pebbles laid out for sorting by size, colour or feel. Simple, grounding, calm.
7. Felt board storytelling. Pre-cut felt shapes on a piece of dark flannel. Your toddler moves the pieces and narrates in a whisper. Language and imagination, no batteries required.
8. Lacing cards. A wooden lacing card with a thick, blunt lace. Quiet, focused and satisfying in a way that outlasts most toddlers' predictions about how long it will hold their attention.
Imaginative play at night need not be elaborate. Vygotsky's concept of the zone of proximal development reminds us that children extend their own capacities through play scenarios they construct themselves, not through entertainment delivered to them. A small wooden figure and two acorn cups is enough.
9. Quiet dolls' hospital. Two or three small dolls or toy animals with a soft cloth for blankets. The baby is crying; the toy is also unwell tonight. The parallel is not lost on a toddler, and playing the carer is deeply reassuring.
10. Whispering puppet show. A single hand puppet and a sofa cushion as a stage. The rule is: puppets only speak in whispers. This becomes a game in itself.
11. Small world in a shoebox. A prepared box with a few wooden animals, some moss or fabric scraps for landscape. Keep one box assembled and ready in the night basket.
12. Miniature kitchen play. A set of small wooden cups and plates, a cloth napkin, some dried pasta for food. Serving a quiet pretend meal to toys is a contained, repeated activity.
13. Story stones. Smooth pebbles painted with simple images: a moon, a tree, a house, a dog. Your toddler draws three stones and makes up a whispered story, encouraging the narrative thinking Gopnik describes as the child's own theory-building.
14. Blanket den with a torch. A low-draped blanket over a chair arm and a soft, warm-toned torch inside. Toddlers will inhabit this space for far longer than seems reasonable, and it muffles sound naturally.
15. Letter or number hunt. Wooden letters laid face down on a tray. Your toddler turns one over, whispers its name and finds something in the room beginning with that sound.
A note on open-ended wooden toys at night
Researcher Jeffrey Trawick-Smith and the TIMPANI study found that wooden, open-ended toys consistently produced the highest quality and longest-duration play episodes in young children, outperforming electronic and single-use plastic toys on every developmental measure. At night, that sustained engagement is exactly what a parent occupied with a newborn most needs from a toddler's toy.
Our wooden toys collection includes pieces designed precisely for this kind of unhurried, independent play, from small figure sets to beautifully weighted stacking forms that are quiet by their very nature.
16. Inset board puzzles. A well-made wooden inset puzzle, ideally one your toddler knows and can complete independently, offers challenge without frustration at an hour when frustration tolerance is low.
17. Stacking rings by colour. A ring-stacking toy used not for stacking but for sorting rings by colour into small bowls. Reframes a familiar object as something new.
18. Shape sorter in slow motion. Ask your toddler to post each shape as slowly and silently as possible. Turning speed into a game shifts the dynamic beautifully.
19. Pattern copying with wooden blocks. Lay out a simple three-block pattern and invite your toddler to copy it exactly. Repeat with new patterns. Spatial reasoning, quiet and absorbing.
20. Jigsaw puzzles with large pieces. A simple eight to twelve piece wooden jigsaw, completed and then mixed up again. At night, repetition is a feature, not a flaw.
Jaques has offered beautifully crafted puzzles and educational wooden toys since 1795. You can browse the full range in our educational toys collection, where pieces are chosen with developmental purpose and quiet durability in mind.
21. Shared whisper storytelling. You begin a sentence, your toddler completes it. Back and forth, in voices just above silence. No book needed, though one may help.
22. Hand massage with lotion. A gentle hand massage with unscented cream. Calming for both parties, deeply connecting and physiologically regulating through touch.
23. Drawing together by lamplight. A small pad and soft pencils. You draw something, your toddler adds to it. Low effort, high warmth.
24. Counting quiet things. How many soft toys are on the bed? How many buttons on your pyjamas? A gentle number game that requires nothing but attention.
25. Looking at a picture book wordlessly. Simply turning pages together in silence, letting your toddler point and you nod. No performance required of anyone.
Avoid anything with flashing lights or electronic sounds, as these raise cortisol and signal daytime to the brain. Avoid competitive games, which require a level of regulation your toddler simply does not have at midnight. Avoid introducing new toys for the first time at night, because novelty creates arousal rather than calm. And avoid the habit of rewarding night waking with unusually exciting activities, as the pattern will consolidate quickly. The night basket should feel special but never thrilling. The goal is always a gentle return to sleep, for everyone.
Entirely normal. Screens are designed to be compelling, and a tired, displaced two-year-old will reach for the most reliable source of stimulation available. Occasional use is unlikely to cause lasting harm: both the American Academy of Pediatrics and researcher Dimitri Christakis acknowledge that context and frequency matter enormously. The concern is not one difficult night but a consolidated habit, because screen use at night suppresses melatonin, raises alertness and makes returning to sleep harder for your toddler. The basket approach, where a reliable set of calm activities is already in place before the baby wakes, removes the moment of negotiation in which screens tend to win.
The key is proximity and predictability. If your toddler can hear or glimpse you, they are far more likely to sustain independent play, a principle rooted in attachment theory and supported by Berk's work on private speech and self-direction in young children. Keep the play space adjacent to where you are nursing or settling the baby rather than in a separate room. Give a specific, concrete instruction: "You are in charge of the animals until I come back." Return briefly and predictably, even every four or five minutes at first, to reinforce that you have not vanished. Over several nights, the intervals will extend naturally.
Yes, and wooden toys are generally far quieter than plastic equivalents, which tend to rattle, click and amplify. Inset puzzles, lacing cards, stacking rings on a fabric mat, felt boards and small wooden figures on a carpeted surface produce almost no noise. The main culprits to avoid are wooden blocks on hard floors and shape sorters with loose-fitting lids. Placing any toy tray on a folded fleece blanket absorbs what little sound remains. Jaques wooden toys are weighted and finished in ways that make them naturally muted in use, which is one reason they have suited family homes for well over two centuries.
If your toddler is already tearful and beyond their window of tolerance, trying to introduce an activity will almost certainly escalate rather than soothe. In that state, the most developmentally appropriate response is co-regulation: physical closeness, a quiet voice, gentle touch and permission to simply rest. Lay a soft blanket beside you, let them curl up, and if sleep finds them on the sofa or the floor, that is genuinely fine. Piaget's work reminds us that development does not happen on a schedule, and a child who falls asleep held and safe on a hard night is having a developmentally sound experience. The activities are for the nights when your toddler is tired but not broken. Know the difference, and be kind to yourself for knowing it.
Britain's oldest toy maker. Every toy open-ended, wooden, and built for exactly the kind of play the research recommends.