Boy's Quiet/Busy Book

Finally this project has been done! I promised E to make him a quiet book after he played his sister's. But just after the promise B got sick with Roseola ( they call it "fake measles "here) so I was totally not in the mood of making anything. 

After B got better I did little by little ever since then, but the whole process was indeed too long. It's getting to the point E has already forgotten all about it. But as a mom I got to keep my promise anyways. So I continue making it and eventually (today) I finished the cover and looks like it's all done.
Husband questioned me during my craft time before sleep: Do you really do this for the kids or for yourself?
Well, obviously the results are for them, but I do not deny that I am definitely having fun all the time:)
This one is for a 4 year old boy, so no need to attach all the small pieces to prevent him from choking. Also I tried a new way by using a photo album and just paste the pages on. It has pros and cons through. Good things are I don't have to sew or bind the pages together any more, and since it has a base just need to paste my design. Down part is the felt pages with contents are way too thick for this poor little album which is made for thin little pictures, so my book looks like it's going to throw up...
I designed some and got some ideas from Pinterest. Again didn't use any patterns or templates.
Also this book gives me a great opportunity to test my dear new Brother Embroidery Machine!!! Husband got this for me for my birthday, and even purchased the way too expensive software to turn any pattern/picture/photo you want into embroidery works. I have been crazy for it since then. So I did some for this book, which is really too much fun.

And here is the book.

Front and back, used my machine to embroider some letters on.

Every boy's book has to have a car page... All the little buildings can be moved around. Don't know if your kid is a Dora's fun, mine loves to pretend to get lost and ask the "map", so this could be a good thing to let him practice his map skill.

The monkey page. I really adore this page. The idea comes from two nursery rhymes. One is a Chinese one "five monkeys swing on the tree, a crocodile is hiding in the water". And this page has buttons to hold the monkeys. The other one is "five little monkeys jumping on the bed", and the monkeys are also finger puppets.

Brush teeth hippo. 

Dress up little boy. I got the idea from a mom's book for her son. And I made E's favorite Captain America, Batman, police officer and firefighter hats.

Waving page.

Food page. He loves cooking. So hopefully he will enjoy this page.

Okay. I tried not to add anything with a strong"education" signal into a toy since I want him to simply enjoy play. But ultimately I am an Asian. Tiger mom gene, you know... Spelling page. Also use my machine to work on the letters. The bottom of the letters has a free spelling place where he can spell freely. Right page has four things, each has a ribbon showing the word hiding under the velcro.

Number page. I found a mom using felt pieces instead of beads, great idea! I wish I would know this trick before B's book... the beads make me nervous as she likes putting them in her mouth. 

I decide to show some of my heritage on this page. Therefore I embroidered one to ten in Chinese characters. All the numbers/characters can be moved around to compose different numbers. The left page has1-5, right page has 5 trangles in each row, so if you add left and right together they will become 6-10. Mostly because right page doesn't have enough space for so many felt circles..

 Anyway let him do a little maths, hope not too complicated.

Last page is to show my heritage even more. Characters! I feel scared to imagine possibly my kids may not be able to write many characters since the "contact" is so weak... I don't really try to push E to learn any at his age, just for fun. Each character covers a picture shows its meaning, so hopefully he will start to realize the relations between these signs and their meanings. Right page is a bag of strokes, each color can compose one character on the left page.

Forgot these two pages:P classic shoe lace and clock page. E loves to sing Hickory Dickory Dock, so added a mouse to the clock page which made him sing the entire song twice before bed!

I still have many ideas but the pages ran out... E found the book from our bedroom and got really excited as he told his dad 12 times "I love it!" And we played it before bed, seems all my hard work has been paid off lol