Quiet Book

I've contemplated making a "quiet"or "busy" book for the kids for ages, but it seemed like so much work.  Well, less than one week before our big road trip to Ohio, I decided to make one anyway.  Nothing like a deadline to get me motivated!  No matter that there is no fabric shop around here, I was determined to use what I had to make it work.  Oh, did I mention that I was also completing my niece's birthday outfit at the same time?

I only managed to eek out seven pages for the trip, and I'll share a few here.  Most of my inspiration was from the blog How to Make a Quiet Book.  Genius!  Homemade by Jill also had a really inspiring book, from which I used her barn and puppet templates and very cute mailbox.  There are lots more blog posts out there and it can consume a person looking at all of them.  To make myself stay focused, I looked at what I had on hand and made a list of the pages I knew I could complete before the trip.  I made another list of pages for my "second round" (probably two nights before our next road trip!) and a third list for "someday" pages.

This page was S's favorite (and the easiest to make).  He loved mixing up the colors and saying "no, no, yes" and practicing "red means stop, green means go".

This was another favorite, for both kids.  C obviously has it mastered, but she loved joking around and mixing up the numbers.  I eventually will add another page for 5-10 and yet another page to practice math problems.  

These pages were fun for me, but the kids weren't too interested in dressing her up.  I thought S would like to practice the zipper, but I guess that was old news to him.  I'm glad I didn't bother making a "boy" figure to dress as well.

You can see that I ran out of grommets so just make marker points of where to add them eventually.  I used a binder ring to hold all the pages together then easily take apart to give the kids separate pages to work on.

This kind of project would be great to do with friends, dividing up the work of each page then swapping finished pieces.  It was also a nice project that I could kind of tote around, cutting out little pieces of felt as I had time.

On another note, I took these pages outside to photograph, and it was so humid my camera lens kept fogging up.  Crazy!!!

Doodling

C loves drawing and coloring, something I also loved as a child.  I recently introduced her to the concept of "doodling".  Here's an example of a doodle around some names.

Recently, Daddy bought C a new book, Drawing, Doodling and Colouring and we've been having lots of fun with it.  Seriously, I want my own copy!  The Usborne website has free printable pages as well, here.  I also read that Costco will be selling some doodling books, too.  I like these books because it helps provide a little spark to her imagination, such as drawing monsters.

Or adding facial features (you can see I like to get in on the fun, too!).

One of my favorites:

Incidentally, I remember reading an article that sited some research that the most innovative scientists, whom people generally consider to be very analytical, are actually quite creative.  Their creativity helps them solve problems in ways never considered.  The article went on to describe ways to encourage this creative problem solving in children, and doodling was one such suggestion.  Personally, I just like sitting next to C and sharing markers while we complete pages from her book. :)