No-Sew Christmas Quiet Book

This is a Guest Post by the super amazing One Hundred Dollars a Month reader Mel.

No-Sew Christmas Quiet Book

What are quiet books?

Quiet books are activity books for toddlers. They are often made of felt or cloth with other accent materials, and each page has a different activity that allows toddlers to practice fine motor skills through play.

They are called quiet books because toddlers can usually do these activities solo or with minimal help. This is a tutorial for a no-sew Christmas quiet book.

Cutting Sugar Cookies

Why a handmade Christmas quiet book?

We’re slowly moving into the phase of actually celebrating holidays with our toddler, so I wanted to get him a Christmas-themed quiet book for St. Nicholas Day so he could play with it for most of December (we ended up not quite making it for actual St. Nicholas Day because of recurrent ear infections, but I set it out for him with his shoes the other day instead as a sort of make-up day).

He has one or two generic quiet books that I’ve bought online from Etsy and Amazon that he’s really liked, but the offerings for Christmas quiet books were a little disappointing and often overpriced.

There weren’t many readymade quiet books available with a Christmas theme, and the ones that existed didn’t offer many pages for the price.

Our toddler has some motor issues that make some activities harder than others for him, so I also wanted to be able to control the activities included and tailor them to his skills.

Supplies:

You could sew a quiet book, but I no longer have the time or space for detailed sewing projects, so I opted to rely on glue and adhesive Velcro instead of needle and thread.

As you can see from some of the photos, the finished result is not quite as sleek (I removed the stray hot glue threads after), but it’s not bad and was super fast.

These are the materials I used:

• Velcro dots and/or Velcro strips
• Felt Glue (or hot glue)
• Felt
• Empty scrapbook album and scrapbook paper (unless you’re using felt pages)
• Scissors
• Pencil (and potentially a white colored pencil to draw on darker felt)
• Cookie cutters or other items used for tracing
• Optional accents (e.g., buttons, ribbon, etc.)

Decorate the Christmas Tree

Instructions:

This is going to vary considerably based on the activities you make, but these are the general steps for each page:

1. Plan your activity page (e.g., counting, matching, dress up, etc.).

2. Cut pieces from felt. This includes background pieces for scenes, smaller pieces that can be removed and manipulated, etc. You can draw the outline of pieces with pencil first or trace them if you wish.

In some cases, I used items like cookie cutters to trace pieces, or used pre-cut shapes. I made the removable pieces a few layers thick to make them more durable, so you may need to cut 2-3 times more shapes if you plan to layer them.

3. Assemble the pieces. I glued pieces together, but you could sew them.

4. Add Velcro or other attachments.

5. Let Velcro and glue set.

6. Assemble pages in the scrapbook. I used several sheets of cardstock in each scrapbook sleeve to make them stiffer and then glued my felt pieces to the plastic exterior of the sleeves.

Some pages have a felt background that’s glued on, and some (like the reindeer) are just glued directly on the scrapbook sleeve so the paper in the sleeve is the background. On some pages, I added extra Velcro along the perimeter of the page to hold pieces in place for storage.

Christmas Light Color Matching

Santa and Elf Dress Up

Filling the Bird Feeder
(The “seeds” are removable from the seed scoop and attach to the feeder.)

Carrots for Rudolph

Decorate the Fireplace

Penguin Puzzle

Tips:

Consider your child’s age and ability level. Make sure pieces are large enough not to pose a choking hazard, easy enough to manipulate that they won’t be frustrating, etc. If you’re making this for a young toddler, you can start with simple activities and add more advanced pages next year.

If you don’t want to draw the pieces, you can trace them or buy felt shapes online.

For pieces of felt that get removed and put back, I used multiple layers of felt glued together to make them sturdier.

Be careful not to make pages too thick. If you attach bulkier pieces like bells, the book may not lay as flat or close as well. I find binders and scrapbooks allow for some bulkier pages as long as most are relatively thin and flat.

If you don’t want to purchase a scrapbook, you can make your pages out of felt, hole punch them, and use binder rings. The holes may need to be reinforced with grommets.

With the Velcro dots I used, the “hook” side was nearly transparent, so I put the the “loop” side on the back of all the removable felt pieces and the “hook” side on the book pages.  This allows the Velcro to blend in a bit. You can also buy different colors of Velcro to help disguise it.

Snowman Assembly

Other Ideas for Activity Pages:

Decorating a gingerbread house. Make a brown felt house and felt candy accents that can attach with Velcro.

Cookie decorating. Make tan or brown felt cookies and have different icing layers that could attach with Velcro.

Adding red stripes to a white candy cane with Velcro.

Reindeer teeth brushing (instead of including the carrot, include a felt toothbrush).

Filling a stocking. Add felt toys and candy to fill a felt stocking.

Shoe lacing and tying. Use grommets and ribbon on a felt ice skate.

Felt nativity scene. Arrange felt figures in a manger.

Christmas textures. Create a page of different textured fabrics and materials to represent Christmas (e.g., fluffy white fabric for Santa’s beard, sweater knit fabric for winter clothes, etc.).

~Mel

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