Kellar's Quiet Book

A friend at church asked me if I would make something for her 5-year-old son to help with his fine motor skills. He is doing occupational therapy, but she felt he could use some extra help at home. She gave me free reign of the project, and told me to use whatever materials I had on hand. I did some research online to find out some of the skills kids practice in occ therapy, and below is the final product!

I decided to make a "big boy" quiet book (all the premade quiet books are too babyish for a big kid like Kellar!). Here's a run-down of the pages I included (pictures follow):

Cover: Unscrewing. Made from old jeans. I cut the tops off 2-liter bottles and embedded them under the jeans and a layer of thick interfacing. I covered the lids with felt and added some fussy-cut pictures to uncover once the lids are screwed off.

Page 1: Weaving. Used ribbon to make the football field; embroidered some footballs and attached to ribbon for weaving.

Page 2: Zipping/Buttoning. Used an old pair of jeans. Added some manly underwear to discover (what 5-year-old would not think that's funny?!).

Page 3: Pinching/Grasping. Made a clock out of felt; embroidered numbers on felt. Attached numbers to alligator hair clips with hot glue.

Page 4: Drawing/Writing. A simple chalkboard made from chalk cloth.

Page 5: Snapping. Printed a monster truck picture onto transfer paper, ironed it to fabric, cut apart and bound edges. Sewed snaps on back.

Page 6: Buttoning. Bound preprinted fabric shapes and made buttonholes where the wheels were. Sewed buttons of appropriate sizes onto page and outlined vehicle shapes by sewing around them.

Page 7: Lacing/Tying. Made a felt shoe and applied grommets for lacing.

Page 8: Zipping. Sewed zipper into a felt UPS box (Kellar was a UPS man for Halloween this year). Made some simple felt envelopes for him to find.

Back Cover: Made from old jeans. It looked boring, so I added a motorcycle from preprinted fabric attached to a ribbon; stores in back pocket.