As I promised yesterday, here are some pictures of the Busy Book I made for Jayna last summer. Most of these activities are way too easy for her now that she has mastered colors, numbers, sorting and phonics….but she still enjoys it since she knows all the answers!!
After many years of teaching young’uns and children with special needs, I long ago discovered it’s always easier to NOT reinvent the wheel. So when making these activities (and File Folder Games), I quite often used Dollar Store activity books for each page. I tried to find ones that were already in color, but no worries if the books you are using are in black in white…..coloring while watching TV smut is very relaxing!!
On the first few pages, I concentrated on color matching and color sorting. I used the color titles from the Elmo book above, and the game pieces (the handprints) are actually cut out from bulletin board borders (available at educational stores, Target and the Dollar Tree). Notice that I laminated an envelope onto the opposite page to hold all of the pieces. Glue on the envelope, and laminate it closed (but don’t seal it)…then you can use an exacto knife to cut away the envelope flap to make the flap functional again!
In hindsight, I guess I should have changed the directionality of the page to vertical!
The next few pages were dedicated to shapes and numbers. I got the shapes out of the Dollar Store Elmo book, but had to trace and cut out the shape pieces at the bottom. And I had to color everything. On the right, I used two strips of a bulletin board border for Jayna to match numbers.
Then I made a couple of pages using bulletin board accent pieces (fish) to create a series of pattern completion and sorting activities. On some of them, I traced an outline of the correct answer, and some I did not (to create varied levels of difficulty).
And finally, I did a few pages with matching objects to their first letter (all from the Elmo book) and a page sorting stickers.
See? Not so hard, if you can bring yourself to cut up an activity book from the Dollar Store! Just paste it on cardstock, laminate it and add velcro and viola! A Busy Book!
Linkin’ up here this week!
