For Christmas, I wanted to make something special for Little Bear that he would enjoy, he could grow into, and would provide a good source of distraction when a little quiet time was needed. After much browsing on (where else) Pinterest and gaining a ton of inspiration, I came up with the idea of making Little Bear his very own Quiet Book!
After many many hours of cutting, sewing and going crazy, here is the end result:
The Cover page was pretty simple but fun to just play with. I ended up doing the cover in brown with cream insides so it would look like a real book. Also, I added straps to the cover so when we are traveling between the car and someplace, I can bundle it all together.
The First page is a simple sensory fringe page.
The Second page is a Lion with a ribbon main (which Little Bear loves to chew on).
For the Third page, I made a field of grass and hid animal shaped beads in the grass. For now, Little Bear loves to try to find the hidden animals. Later, he can learn to match the animals at the top of the page with the animals in the grass.
The Fourth page is a cute simple button color page.
The Fifth page is a color/shape matching page. :)
The Sixth page is a Abacus type page made out of ribbons and beads. The letters are made out of Puffy Paint which add a nice dimension to this page.
The Seventh page is a zipper page - pretty self explanatory there.
The Eight page is a shoe tying page. I made the shoes out of felt and they turned out very cute.
The Ninth page is a page put together using an old pare of overalls that I cut up and sewed onto the page. The straps come unlatched and the pockets are open so Little Bear can put stuff into them.
The Tenth page is the life vest page where the straps latch together.
The 11th page is well - its the end!
Oh and here is what the back cover looks like.
Its really plane but the idea was to make it look like a book.
The whole book is held together with binder rings so if I wanted to, I could always add more pages if I wanted to in the future. I used felt as the base for the pages and for most of the notions on the pages as well. Although I used a lot of inspiration on Pinterest, I ended up not using a specific pattern, but just used the inspiration and winged it until it looked good enough. ;)
I also made 2 other books (excluding pages 9 and 10) for my nephews too!
Oh and I would like to add a very supper special thank you for my amazing husband who without his help in keeping Little Bear preoccupied for many hours, I would not have been able to get this done!!!
March 1, 2013
Now that Little Bear has had this for a few months, he loves it! I keep it in the car and it makes the rides to and from day care and while we are running errands but more enjoyable. :) Overall, worth every bit of effort!
