How to Make a Quiet Book for Your Toddler

See all the posts in our Intentional Toddler Time series here.

We’ve got a crazy travel schedule going on right now. Intentional Toddler Time is on the go for pretty much this entire month.

In light of that, this week I want to share you with Samuel’s Quiet Book I put together for him to play with during our six plane rides last week. It was so simple and now I’m totally addicted! So, you might see more of these in the near future. We have another trip this week!

Update: Almost six months later, I haven’t made another quiet book because Sam still loves playing with this one. Score!

How to Make a Quiet Book for Your Toddler

After surfing the web Pinterest, I came across a brilliant idea – quiet books for toddlers. The only problem is that most of them require sewing, and I have not had time to learn the ins and outs of my sewing machine. Maybe this winter? I hear they are long in Colorado… (Update: Winter is almost gone and still no sewing magic over here.)

Since I can’t sew worth a flip, this eliminated most of the really amazing quiet books I found, but it did not eliminate their ideas.

Therefore, I decided to get creative and use what I had on hand to make my quiet book. Insert my laminator! Out of curiosity, I looked through Pinterest and found a couple more people who are smart like me! I love this DIY Quiet Book from Playing House in Maryland, as well as this DIY Kids Busy Book from Crafty Chic Mommy. Both blogs have lots of great ideas for toddlers, if you’re in the mood to browse.

What I Used:

• Card stock in various colors
• Velcro dots
• Construction paper in various colors
• Stickers, stamps, and other embellishments of my liking
• Glue
• Scissors
• Hole puncher
• Various shape stencils
• 3-4 Large key chain rings
• Laminating sheets
• Laminator

What I Did:

I cut out the images and shapes I wanted. Then, I glued them to the card stock, added some construction paper and stickers here and there, and laminated the pages. I then stuck Velcro on the pieces and bound it together with key rings. That’s all there was to it! Want to see my pages?

My name is … SAM. The letters of his name attach with Velcro to help him practice spelling his name. This is a little “advanced” for him, or at least I thought. I found that he’s great at taking them off, and then putting them back on the way he found them. I was very impressed. Yet another example of underestimating the abilities of toddler.

Apple picking is probably his favorite. It’s just red circles that he can move around. This page held his attention the longest out of all of the pages I made!

Shape matching was certainly his second favorite in his quiet book. He’s getting really good at matching shapes. We’ve had lots of practice with our tot book, so this was a big hit. The page on the left holds the pieces he can remove and match to the other side.

The last page you see is opposite our Stop and Go page (below). I had intended to bring along some cars for him to play with, but I forgot them. So this page was a bust. BUT I am hopeful that it will be loved in the future, if mama would remember to bring the baby some cars!

5 Little Ducks is probably one of his favorite nursery songs. So on the left are the words to the song and on the right are the ducks that we add and take away throughout the song. I was surprised at how little attention this page got, but I think that has more to do with him being TOTALLY into “If You’re Happy and You Know It” right now than not liking this page.

Samuel loves fish. We watch Finding Nemo a lot around here. I mean…A LOT! So for this one I just used seashell stickers leftover from my failed scrapbooking days and made the numbers and fish with Velcro. Why I did four seashells and not three, I have no idea. It certainly confused him…ooops!

Finally the stop and go page. This is really neat, and he loved learning what order they go in. He did really well with it, and I was surprised that he already sort of knew it. Again, without our cars, this page wasn’t as interesting.

All-in-all I would say this quiet book was a huge hit with Samuel. He played with it so much, and thoroughly enjoyed the Velcro part of the equation. When you put a lot of work into something, it’s nice to see your child play with it for more than five minutes.

Sam’s Quiet Book entertained him for almost an entire hour when I first showed it to him. After that, it entertained him for about 15-20 minute intervals. I’d call that a success with a 20 month old!

Have you made a quiet book? What were some pages your toddler enjoyed?

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