Busy Books

Something I often seen and wanted to do, but never accomplished, is to make the kids some busy books or quiet books.  Our church lets the kids stay in the nursery until their 4th birthday, and then they go to other classes.  So…I haven’t really needed it to keep them quiet in church yet.

With twins coming, I know I will often be unable to play, read, and entertain Nolan & Elaine as they have been used to.  I will also be often busy nursing the new babies.  A friend {also expecting} recently shared a Velcro quiet book she made for her little girl.  She was kind enough to share some pages with me.  This saved me a lot of work!  I also printed off several games and paper doll activities from a website she recommended.

We are trying to learn other letters besides “E” for Elaine’s name, so I was very happy that Cindy had thought to include a page like this in her book!

This was a game, but it is good for Elaine to sort by type, and Nolan just sorts by color for now.  I also added a farm animal game board that they can play together {maybe} if mom is busy.

This is supposed to be Prince William and Princess Kate, but Elaine just likes it because she is wearing a “married” dress.  There are four different dresses, veils, and bouquets that she can choose from.

I only did the stoplight and shape/color matching pages for Nolan since Elaine is moving past that stage.

One thing I changed from Cindy’s idea was the storage.  I didn’t have enough Velcro to put storage spots on the opposite page.  I just hole-punched a quart sized slider bag, and let the kids store their pieces in a baggie next to each page.  They both know how to open and close the sliders, so it is working well right now.  {Though I do find Nolan’s pieces throughout the house}.

Nolan kept hijacking Elaine’s paper dolls, so I printed out a boy/girl “paper” doll set for him too.  I gave him primarily boy outfits, but he likes doing what Sister is doing.

These dolls and outfits were the most time consuming to cut out and adhere to Velcro.  Since there are so many different outfits, I was using a lot of the fuzzy side of the Velcro, but only one set of the rough Velcro on the dolls themselves.  The problem corrected itself when I made Nolan a set.  I reversed the types of Velcro to use up all my pieces.  And now Nolan’s outfits only stick on Nolan’s dolls, and Elaine’s outfits only stick on Elaine’s dolls.  No fighting over whose is whose!

Elaine and Nolan have often been caught playing with their quiet books lately.  It has saved a lot of fights while I am in the shower, too.