Project: No-Sew Toddler Quiet Book

We have a bad habit of not getting around to taking a family vacation until it's really cold just about everywhere. And I like a WARM weather vacation. Which means we have to travel pretty far to find warm temperatures. We have gotten in the "habit" (I love this habit) of going to Hawaii for the past three years, starting with my Babymoon for Bugga. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Hawaii, every part of it. But getting there via long airplane flights, while crossing over several time zones with my toddler, can be worse than a root canal.

This time I was determined to stress about the flight as little as possible. I typically travel with a certain collection of things to entertain my daughter during the flight, hope that we don't run out of ideas - and this time was no different. I did some searching and came across the idea of making a Quiet Book. I was not in the mood to lug out the sewing machine right before my trip, so I looked for some no-sew ideas that could be made faster. I took a couple ideas from various blogs, and then made them my own. I was also then inspired to create some other various pages that I thought my daughter would enjoy.

Below are the general directions for how to create your No-Sew Toddler Quiet Book, with links to separate posts about each of the pages I created so you can see them in detail if you want.

This ended up being a fun treat for Bugga on the plane, and it bought us about 30 minutes of entertainment. Now that we are back from our trip, I plan on keeping this book in the nursery to only be brought out when I am home alone with Bugga and my newborn (3 weeks to go!) and I need some toddler quiet time.

No-Sew Toddler Quiet Book

Materials Needed:

5 1/2" by 8 1/2" Mini Binder
Various craft paper in a variety of colors and patterns
Laminating machine and laminating sheets
glue dots
paper trimmer
scissors
Velcro dots
hole punch
computer/printer/printer paper as needed

Instructions:

Pick a page to start with. The nice thing about the 3-ring Mini Binder is that you can always add and remove pages, so you can tailor your books to different children, focus on seasons for holiday-related pages, etc.
Determine if you need one or two pages for each page's theme.
Cut one or two background pages depending on Step 2 using the paper trimmer. Trim them to 5 1/2" by 8 1/2" using the craft paper. Cut out colored shapes, letters, decorations, people, etc. - whatever is relevant to your theme. If you do not have the right color paper, or want a specific design, a quick internet search for free images can provide you with great icons that you can then print and cut out for your pages. You can also use a basic drawing software program to create your own.
Separate pieces between those that are part of the scene/background, and those that will be the interactive components.
For the pieces that are part of the scene/background, put together the scene using the glue dots. Once finished, laminate the pages(s).
For the pieces that will be interactive (separate from the background) laminate them and then cut out each piece with scissors, careful to leave a slight amount of clear laminate around the edges of each piece.
Attach Velcro dots to the back of each interactive piece. Place matching Velcro dots on the background scene where applicable. You might need more scene Velcro dots than you have interactive pieces based on your design. Be careful to use the same type of Velcro across the scene so all the interactive pieces can be used all over the page.
Align the page with the three rings in the binder to mark where the holes should be. Use a hole puncher to add 3 holes to the top/bottom of the pages as applicable. Place the page into the binder.
Create the rest of your pages. Don't forget a cover page that can slip into the binder plastic (no laminating necessary).
Extra step: I added Velcro to the back outside corners of each page when in the binder to attach the back of each page to the back of the next. This keeps my kiddo from landing on a bunch of backside pages that have no activities. The Velcro allows you to constantly change around the order of the pages, no problem!