Big Quiet Book

I finally finished the quiet book that I made with Kayla in mind. Elise will enjoy aspects too, but Kayla is already in love with all of it. I showed it to her today after I finished it, and she told me, "Thank you, Mommy, for my quiet book. It is soooo special." She is too sweet.

Let's begin with her favorite page...the dress-up "Kayla" doll. The doll has a suitcase to hold all her clothes in. Her favorite are the Minnie jammies which happen to be her favorite article of clothing in her own wardrobe (go figure). The ballerina outfit is a close second.






And now to the beginning. The cover is nothing to write home about, but I just wanted something to hold the thing together. I accomplished that.


The first page is a simple shapes and colors match.


Next comes a page to "write" letters. Eventually she will be able to practice her letters and write some words, but for now she just scribbles and makes up "letters" to send in the mailbox on the next page which opens and the flag moves up and down.






Next is the picnic basket with food in it. The corresponding page has a plate setting so you can "eat" your food properly. :)




This page has a tree which you can attach either leaves, blossoms, or apples to with velcro to go through the various seasons.


And then we have a page where Kayla can move the little cars on the road from the house (with a garage to "park" the cars) to the church.


And of course, there is the Noah's Ark page. There are actually two of all the animals. I designed all these finger puppets myself. The farm ones on the next page were copied.


The Barn page. I made the top of the barn extra storage since I made two of ALL the animals (farm animals included) in case Kayla wanted to take the barn yard animals on the ark as well.




And the last page is a number matching game. The petals of the flower are two different colors to teach a simple purple, pink, purple pattern as well.

Little Quiet Book

I'm not quite done with Kayla's quiet book yet, but I had so much fun, that I decided to make Elise a small one as well. Hers is much simpler and the cover piece will eventually need to be redone, but it should last through our 2 week long trip out East. Hope she likes it...

Page one: The Lion
His mane is all sorts of ribbons so she can feel all the fun different textures.


Page two: Tactile Flowers
The flowers are made with some lacy material that should be fun for her to touch.


Page three: The chicken (or duck) and the egg
There is a velcro that attaches and detaches the top of the broken egg and allows the chicken inside to pop out.




Page four: Counting beads
This is pretty self-explanatory. You move the beads around and practice counting. Kayla will be able to do that now; Elise will just move them around. I counted by fives.


Page five: Under the sea
I used fun ribbons and foil to make some underwater sea creatures that are very bright and tactile.


Page six: Family house
The windows and door open to reveal family photos. Peek-a-boo!




Ta-da! I am actually pretty proud of myself, but just wait till you see the one I made Kayla. I am REALLY proud of it (and spent a ton of time on it!). This one was much easier and faster to make. :)

Popsicle Stick Picture Puzzles

Another quiet toy I found on Pinterest utilizing Popsicle sticks! This activity is definitely too young for Elise, but Kayla will love it. She helped me with some of the gluing and she even tried a few of them out.

All you need is some old pictures that you don't have another use for and some Popsicle sticks.

Step One is to decide how much of your picture is really usable. Extra space that doesn't have a person or large amounts of space where the scenery is very similar will be difficult for your toddler to piece together. Line up Popsicle sticks side-by-side and cut off the extra that you don't need.

Step Two is to turn the picture over, and trace lines using one of the Popsicle sticks.

Step Three is simply to begin gluing the pieces onto the Popsicle sticks. I make marks after I glue the first one so that my Popsicle sticks will all line up nicely at the end. Just make sure not to turn then upside down once you make the marks and glue the pictures in the same direction.

Step Four if you are making more than one puzzle is to number them (or make them in some way) so that if puzzle pieces get mixed up, you know which ones belong to which picture puzzle.

And voila! You have a lovely and very personal puzzle for your child to piece together.

This one will probably work when she is a little older, but Kayla had a hard time doing this one independently because since it is a collage, the pictures are smaller, and the ones on the end are hard to match correctly for a child. Look closely and you can see what I mean. It is best to stick with pictures where the subject is bigger in general.

Popsicle stick linking toys

I am working on quiet activities and toys for the girls to use for our Bissonnette Wedding extravaganza this summer. I am mostly worried about plane travel. I have two young children and will be more than halfway through my third pregnancy. With plenty of little activities I know Kayla will be just fine. Elise, is the difficult one here. She is one. She likes to walk and be independent. She has not fallen asleep in someone's arms since she was maybe 5 months old. So, I have been scouring Pinterest looking for anything and everything that will keep one or both of my children occupied during the plane flight. If I can't find enough, I'll start researching the Benadryl option...

The first quiet toy option I found and made into a reality is some popsicle stick linking toys. The only supplies needed are popsicle sticks and velcro with a sticky back. We added some color to the sticks with crayon (it gave Kayla something to do and the sticks look pretty). The person that I copied from on Pinterest had her daughter paint the sticks before applying the velcro, but if Elise gets ahold of them and puts them in her mouth, that would be gross, so we opted for crayon.

I put little circles where the velcro was supposed to go so that Kayla could help me with sticking in on. The basic idea is to put one piece that is soft on one end and one piece that is scratchy on the other end. You turn the stick over and put a scratchy piece on the other side of the soft one and vice versa. If you mess a few up, it's really no big deal. They will stick somehow.

The velcro I had on hand was large squares, so we cut them into fourths and they were perfect.

We colored a little before, and colored more after. These were before the second coating of crayon color. Kayla had fun making "houses" and "hotels" and all sorts of shapes until I put them away with the promise that we'd play with them more on our trip. She is excited.

Obviously these can be used as a quiet church toy as well. That's what the person on Pinterest made them for.