Try This to Entertain Your Child in a Restaurant

A quiet book is a series of felt or fabric pages containing quiet activities. Elçin from Teeny Tiny English has written this excellent guest blog post to demonstrate how she made one for her child. Elçin is a Turkish mum and early years English teacher with fabulous creative ideas and enthusiasm for young learners. I would definitely like to make one of these quiet books for Milo!

Read her instructions below to find out how…

These books are perfect for when you might need to keep your child occupied, such as during trips or at doctors appointments. A child playing with a quiet book can acquire so many beneficial life skills as well as developing fine motor skills. They are excellent for independent playing and as a tablet replacement when necessary.

This is an example of one that you can easily make for your young child.

Bumble Bee

This hungry bumble bee is following the numbers and landing on the flower to suck the nectar. Your little one can thread the shoelace under the ribbons to complete the activity.

Dump Truck

This dump truck needs to be filled with bricks to build the wall. Your little one can load the bricks into the dump truck three at a time and attaches them in the designated places to build a neat wall.

Giraffe Needs Help

Your child can put the leaves on the tree branches, snap the missing spots on the giraffe and pretend to feed the giraffe with the leaves.

Vehicles

There is a very thin fishing line (barely visible) tied to all of the pieces for movement. First, they will match the airplane, car and boat to the correct location and then they can slide them right to left while making sentences.

Fishing Pole

There is a tackle box for the fishing rod and a pocket for the fish. Your child can put the fish on the lake and try to catch the fish by casting the fishing rod (I used a leftover stick). The fishing rod has a paper clip attached to the bottom of the ribbon and the fish have magnets sewn into them.

Fire Station

Your child can take the parts of the fire truck and put them in the correct place and then dress the firefighter.

Feed the Bunnies

There are different sizes of carrots mixed on the garden patch. After picking the carrots up, your child can match the correct size of the carrots with the correct size of the bunnies. The big ones go into the big bunny’s pocket, the medium-sized ones go into the medium-sized bunny’s pocket and the smallest ones go into the small bunny’s pocket.

Potato Man/Woman

Your child can put the face parts and accessories on the potato to turn it into a person.

Coloured Cupcakes

Your child can match the cupcake frosting to the same colour buttons. Then they button them up to the correct colour.

Let’s Make a Pizza

This is a number matching activity. The pizza slices have tomato slices on them. The whole pizza has numbers on it, so the child will count the tomato slices and match them with the numbers.

Animal Homes

The child finds the correct home for each animal. The homes are sewed on to the front of the felt and the animals are sewed to the back of the felt sheet with string.

I Spy

Your child finds the objects with the magnifying glass and draws them on the felt board below. Each piece is attached with velcro. (Instead of glueing, sewing the velcro on enables us to use the book longer without it splitting). I was going to attach the pages by sewing them back-to-back and punch holes in them to make a ribbon, but I ended up sewing a fabric cover to keep them together. This was the easiest way because the pages are quite thick and hard to handle.

You can make a nice cover with a pocket for all the parts.

I hope this inspires you to make a quiet book for your little one. The possibilities are endless.

If you make one, please send me a photo via my Instagram.

I have a video showing our book. You can find it here: www.instagram.com/teenytinyenglish

Have fun!

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