A Busy Book for Master Fox

What is a busy book? Well its a book filled with activities in a hope to keep your little toddler busy! Who are we kidding right, this is going to work for all of about 5 minutes! 

I, just like i'm pretty sure all other mothers of toddlers have done, have used pinterest to find activities to keep your little ones entertained, but also with learning in mind. This is one of those examples and has been something which I have been collecting ideas for for a while now. They are usually handmade and sewn so this was definitely a project I knew I could do. 

My plan for this book is to keep it until baby Fox arrives and then it can be his special book which he looks at with mummy while I am breastfeeding. It will hopefully become special to him and will allow us to still have some bonding time and not feel neglected while I have to spend so much time looking after baby. 

I'm not going to lie, I pretty much stole all the ideas for the pages for this book from pinterest, so this is by no means unique or original, but hey when there are so many good ideas out there where is the need. Also I have made this for personal use, it is in no way going to be marketed or sold by me. If you want to have a look at my board of ideas you can find it here on pinterest. 

So let me tell you a little about the pages: 

Page 1: Felt carrots attached to ribbon which can be inserted into holes in the ground which have been sewn as buttonholes. The top of the wheelbarrow also remains open so that the carrots can also be put into the barrow.

Page 2: Animal beads strung onto ribbon which has been attached between two pieces of felt. The number of animals on each row increase by one and the beads can be moved back and forth to encourage counting. 

Page 3: A felt monster with a zip for a mouth which contains some pom poms. This page helps encourage fine motor skills in opening and closing the zip and Master fox will surely have lots of fun putting the pom poms in his mouth. Pom poms are one of our favourite non play play items. You can have hours of fun with these, including pom pom fights which seems to be a favourite game of his grandparents! I purposefully made this monster in blue and purple to match his favourite monster Sully!

Page 4: Three vehicles attached to ribbon which can be moved backwards and forwards across the page. A car, a train and an aeroplane. This again encourages fine motor skills and also imaginary play. 

Page 5: A whale with an open mouth and 3 fish attached to the page with poppers. The fish can be removed from the page and fed to the whale and then reattached. Master Fox loves a whale, and he has a Duplo one which he loves to feed so hopefully he will enjoy this. 

Page 6: This lovely little crocodile has a mouth that opens really wide to show off its sharp teeth. This is great for making snapping motions but the page also includes a toothbrush which can be used to clean the crocs teeth promoting good dental hygiene. The toothbrush can be placed back in the holder once used. 

Page 7: This brave little fireman has got into his lift to help put out the fires in the building. The lift is attached with buttons and buttonholes so that he can be lowered up and down to be closer to the fire. 

Page 8: The last and final page is the least sophisticated with some coloured pockets and some coloured wooden sticks. Not the most exciting page but an excellent one to help learn colours and matching skills. 

I really hope Master Fox likes his little book, I am really pleased with it and I am glad I finally got around to making it. I had loads more ideas for pages but I needed to finish somewhere otherwise I wouldn't be getting anything else done. 

Felt Finger Puppet Gang

Come and meet the gang.... Percy the Polar Bear, Henry the Hedgehog, Leo the Lion, Mr Fox, Kitty Mew Mew and Mr Dinosaur. I don't know why but all my soft toys have always been male, I'm not sure what this says about me? Do your soft toys (I would say did, but come on you know you still own some) have a gender? I would love to know I'm not the only odd one out there.

So anyway, it's been a while since I have played with finger puppets, but how cute are these little felt guys? You might be wondering then why I made them? Well now that Master Fox is 6 weeks with every day he is getting more awake and more inquisitive. To help him learn about his new world I have been looking for activities to do with him to stimulate and help his mental development. There are lots of great ideas from simply showing him things around the house to smells but of course my favourite activity was the one which featured finger puppets! I probably could have gone with a theme, say woodland or zoo animals or something but he doesn't know the difference. I just made up my favourite animals ;)

Little Felt finger puppets are so easy to make. All you need is some felt, scissors, needle and thread. Draw roughly around your finger onto a piece of paper but add about 1cm all the way around. Once you have done this cut it out and this is your finger template. From that you just need to cut shapes from felt to make little faces and features and sew them on with co-ordinating thread. Once you have finished with the features you then sew around the edge and top of the puppet leaving the bottom open. You can of course use glue if you don't want to sew them.

They took about 15 minutes per puppet which makes this another awesome project for making during baby naps. It took me about 3 naps to make these 6 little guys, not bad at all.

Have you ever made any toys for your little newborns? I am continuously hunting for ideas for playtime so would love to hear about them.

Blogging Home School and New Stationary

So, I think that missing my first post since I set out my news years resolutions to you is the perfect time to sit down and get this blogging shit together. You may have heard me mention the fab ladies at Blogcademy before (who very kindly selected me as a winner for one of their sparkly goodie bags). Well they run two day, in person, workshops for blog owners to help them find focus, get hints and tips from people who really know their business and to hopefully improve their blogs for you, the people who come along and read them.

Well I would LOVE to be able to attend one of their workshops, they look like so much fun, not to mention educational. Sadly though the price of attending is a little more than I can stretch too so that will have to wait until a lottery win I am afraid. However, these lovely ladies have now offered those of us who can't attend for any reason the opportunity Home School with bite size videos full of loads of information for bloggers. They are also pretty cheap. It is my plan to purchase one a month and work through them so I can hopefully create some better content for everyone. They also very kindly offer the first one for FREE so there really is no excuse to not go check it out!

Even Scamp wants to get in on the learning....

But as we all know, new education requires new stationary right? Well it wouldn't be my blog if that wasn't at least brought to you in some crafty form, so I made a fabric book cover for my new note book using my favourite 'by the sea' pink anchor fabric. Do you like? I also have to use some of my favourite ever pens which are Muji coloured gel pens. They sadly closed the shop in Nottingham, but you can still get these online, and believe me, they are well worth it. Honestly, on Christmas day these are the presents we really hope for under the tree, even more so than the years new underwear!

I have high hopes from these ladies so lets see how this place starts looking in a few months once I am well educated in the art of blogging!

Now I think its time to go in for a cuppa, its hard work doing all this learning!