Quiet Books for My Girls

Last fall I decided I wanted to make my girls quiet books for Christmas. I think the last project I completed on the sewing machine was in my 7th grade home economics class, so I knew it was going to be a challenge. Many, many hours later, I finally finished them. My goal with this project was to create something that would help both my girls (but especially Antalya) with their fine motor skills. I chose each page with an end goal in mind (learning how to button, snap, match shapes, clothespins, etc).

Here's the final product:


Name page:

This page was probably the most time consuming of them all. I cut out three copies of every letter. Sewed the first copy onto the muslin page, and then blanket stitches the other two copies together for the matching piece. On Victoria's I used velcro to make the focus just on matching the letters, but for Antalya who already is a champ at matching, I put little snaps on the back of the letters so she would have to practice her fine motor skills (she's not able to do the snaps yet, but we are working on it).

Button Flowers:


Balloons:

I attached the balloons with large snaps - perfect for beginner snap-learners.

Dress-up Doll:



Barn with Animal Finger Puppets:

This was the only page I did 'just for fun'. There's no great fine motor goal, other than have fun playing with the puppets. This is by far Antalya's favorite page. I made five animals for her, because the first day she got to play with it, she put all four of the puppets on her fingers, and then got very upset when she had one finger left out. The barn doors open and there is pocket to keep the finger puppets in.

Flower Pot:


Mailbox:

This is my favorite page. The door to the mailbox opens and the girls can write letters, practice folding them, and then put them in the mailbox.

Hair braiding:


Counting:

Antalya knows her numbers 1-10 forwards and backwards, so for her page I did numbers 10-20.

Shapes:


Most of the pages are a combination of ideas I found on other websites. There are tons of great ideas for quiet books out there. Here are the main ones that I followed for this project:
Homemade by Jill
Serving Pink Lemonade
How to Make a Quiet Book
Ideas on Pinterest