Quiet Book

When Ethan was just 4 weeks old we moved from DC to Salt Lake for the summer. I didn't know a lot of people and was completely overwhelmed with a new baby who slept only for 2 hours intervals at night and only took 30 minute naps throughout the entire day. Let's just say I was going a little crazy being home alone with him. So I started looking for creative outlets for myself. I started making him a quiet book and a few months later a friend of mine showed me a pattern book she had with all these wonderful church themed pages. It's literally taken me 4 years to finish them all but it's been a great project to do while vegging out in front of the TV while Taylor was at night classes or studying for the BAR. Ethan loves the pages and there are enough that he is usually entertained for all of Sacrament meeting. It's great not to have to drag a whole bagful of toys to church anymore and the velcro pulling is literally the loudest noise he makes.
So I thought I'd post them and if you want me to email you the pattern or directions I would love to.
The Ten Commandments as a puzzle:
This is Ethan's favorite (bizarrely). Just a little spinner game.

This one is my favorite. Sammy is hungry and his mouth is just a hole in the green fabric so you can take the food from the refrigerator and put it into his mouth and then unzip his tummy when you're done. All the foods that are bad for him go into the trash can.

The Golden Plates with 6 picture pages. Noah's Ark complete with pairs of animals to play with. I didn't take pictures of all the little pieces but you get the point.

One of the things I really like about this pattern is that it works for younger children like Ethan who still can't read. He can still do the page though by matching shapes and later he'll be able to read the words and match based on his knowledge. Again the pieces didn't get pulled out but you get the point.

This one if for Christmas. Unzip the bible and there are all the Nativity pieces that stick on the felt fabric. Sorry about the focus.

Here's the latter-day prophet page. Ethan can't do this one yet (alright I'll admit that I cheat on a few myself) so there's numbers on the back and he likes to count and put them where they go.

Another counting one with pictures of our blessings and then a Family History page. I'll be needing to add the new babies picture in October.

Ethan loves unlocking the lock and then inside the treasure box is the blue bag with "jewels" like charity, kindness, testimony, etc that you can put on strings and make into necklaces. Inside the world pocket are little puppets of kids from around the world. This is Isaac's favorite and I don't mind either since it takes him literally a full minute just to get one puppet onto his finger and then he dances them around and makes cute talking sounds.

The best part of this book is that it's useful in other ways too. It saves me once a week and then if I need a spur of the moment lesson for Family Home Evening, I just pull out a page and voila! we have a lesson.