Nap Mat

The kiddos started preschool this week. The princess goes four days a week and little prince goes two days a week. Oddly, sometimes that doesn'tseem like enough, but they'll be in full-time school soon enough.

The two-year-old class still takes naps, so I had to get a nap mat for the little man. The school recommended something called a KinderMat, which I couldn't find anywhere (although they did say you can get it at Wal-Mart. I don't go to Wal-Mart).

I knew it was covered in some sort of plastic, probably vinyl, so I decided that I wanted something much more cozy for little guy and decided to make something myself. I bought several yards of flannel, a small pillow, and three squarish 1" washable foam inserts. He was supposed to take a mat, a pillow, and a blanket. I initially thought I would make a mat with a pillow and blanket attached (you can actually find those online), but I didn't buy quite enough fabric to easily make a blanket. I could have probably quilted something together, but I only had a day, I didn't really have any matching fabric, and I've never quilted before.

So I decided to make a mat with a pillow attached.



You can see how the foam fits a bit better here:



All folded up:



I remembered that my grandmother (little guy's great-grandmother) made him a cozy pooh-bear blanket, so rather than try to figure out how to add my own blanket, he took that one to school. That's the blanket folded up inside the mat.

Here's the inside of the attached pillowcase:



I'm pretty pleased how that turned out, particularly since I thought to add extra fabric to allow the pillow case to fold over and lie flat on the mat.

His teacher said he slept more than an hour, so it must have been cozy.