When my I was a young mother with a toddler and a pre-schooler, I struggled to keep my boys quiet at church. My solution was to sew an activity book. I started by cutting out a stack of light denim for the pages and then drew my ideas in pencil before painting, gluing and sewing details for each page. I probably got some of my ideas from friends since this was long before the days of Pinterest and craft blogs. Most of the pieces are now missing, but before I tossed the book, I wanted to document some of the activities in case I ever need a Christmas gift idea for grandchildren.
The book started with a dresser shaped pocket filled with clothes that could be used to dress a boy, like a velcro version of a paper doll. I used to paint on white fabric, glue it to felt and then cut it out to give it a little stiftf-ness to make flannel board activities, so I assume I did that here as well.
Because the pages were sewn together using the zig-zag stitch, I could leave the bottom open between the front and back of a page for kids to use their finger as a trunk and pretend to drink from a barrel of water. I also made a pocket for a pad of paper and pencil. Drawing is always a great quiet activity.
I made this book years before I ever got a cell phone, so my kids at least would have recognized a receiver, which is now missing from the book and from our lives. They could removed the receiver from the Velcro it if they wanted to pretend to talk, or they could push the numbers when I'd recite a phone number. I can only assume that the hand page was for adding rings or counting. But I don't really remember. What's that hand doing there?
The lion's tale had three cords for learning to braid and the caterpillar hand colored cirlces to rearrange and than try to match up. At the school for the Blind, this would be a great Functional Vision Assessment to determine whether or not a child is color blind.
Strips of felt were for learning to weave, and a brad held some clock hands to rotate and learn time telling.
