Cup of Autism: Quiet/Busy Book

What do you do on a Saturday morning-afternoon and into Sunday when your husband is home and there are no other plans being made?

Make a quiet book of course!!!

We researched blogs and pinterest.com for ideas and many of them were made for cloth books, I did not have any fabric, which is a feat because I am usually making new weighted blankets for the boys. So we redid some of the ideas we were seeing, and added in some new things that would make our boys very happy, for use with a paper busy book.

Hours later, with our printer ink almost depleted, all of our card stock gone, and our over abundance of velcro dots diminished; we have two completed quiet books and the boys love them.

Here is a break down (with pictures) of what we did, as well as a download of our templates that

we used and links to the various websites we got some of our ideas off of.

Step 1 - The Covers

We used Microsoft PowerPoint for pretty much most of this.

Step 2 - The pages

This one is "Feed the Bear" We cut out and colored the bear, then we found some food pictures and cut a few of those out and velcro dotted everything so that the boys had to feed the bear. We also left the bear's bow tie off so the boys can put that on him as well.

This one the boys have to match the whole fruit to the half fruit. It's a bit tricky for Scott so we made a double of it for him so he matches the whole fruit with the whole fruit and the half fruit with the half fruit, but we kept it lined up so he knows which half fruit goes with which whole fruit.

This is the rocket ship. The boys have to build the rocket ship so it can blast off to the moon.

This is Scott's favorite. They have to put the leaves on the tree. There is also a little blue bird that they can put on there too.

Here is the "Build the Ice Cream Cone" page. The boys have to build it from biggest to littlest scoop.

The "Mister Potatohead" Page. Both the boys love mixing him up, especially Scott:

Here is Scott's creation.

Then we have the barn page, which looks like this, but the boys get to open the barn doors and put a horse, pig, and cow inside the barn.

Like so.

Then we made a mail box where the boys have to put the flag on to show there is mail. Then we made 3-d envelopes that the boy's can open and inside there is a letter from Mama and Dada. This is Aiden's from Dada

And this is Scott's from Mama

We made a laptop for Aiden, he loves grabbing the calendar down and acting like he is typing by using the squares for the days as keys. I cut out all of the keys and taped them to the keyboard of this "computer" before I laminated it so that it has a bit of texture to it when he types.

We made a house that the boys have to put the windows and door on.

And we made a finish the pattern page.

We also have the traditional "Match the Shapes" page.

Here we did a different take on matching colors. We have them match shapes made of various shades of a color to the base color

We then have a "Tic-Tac-Tow" page they can play.

Then we have a counting page. This one is Scott's, he loves Pinkerton, our Sphynx so we made it a "Count the Pinkertons" page. For Aiden we made count the sheep because sheep are one of his favorite animals.

We could not make a quiet book without a stoplight for Aiden, but on his we did not put the lights for him to match too, he just has the black box and he has to put the lights in order on it, and he is very fast at doing so.

We of course had to put some trains in here for Scott

And Cars for Aiden. Both the trains and the cars just have random velcro dots along them so the boys can play with moving them along the tracks and roads.

I know that's a lot of pages. We realized that when we were binding the books with rings, but it is worth it because the boys love them. We also made a "ribbon," aka laminated card stock to wrap around and close the book. Also if you are wondering if we keep all the pieces on the pages they are used for, the answer is no. On the backs of each page we put more velcro dots to hold the pieces for the next page. This way when the book is open on the table, the boys can see the pieces for the page they are on easily and transfer to where they belong.