Make a Passover Busy Book

A felt activity book is a great way to keep smaller kids entertained. They're especially fun to make around the holidays--when themes for the book abound, and mom and dad are busy with preparations. Another benefit to making your own busy book is that you can focus on learning areas appropriate for your child. This guide to making a busy book focuses on Passover as an example, but you can choose any theme or holiday, and use your own creativity to design the pages.

What You Need:

• Same-size squares or rectangles of felt
• Scissors
• Hole punch
• Ribbon
• Fabric glue
• More felt for activities
• Other accessories, such as buttons, snaps, crinkly paper, etc.

What You Do:

1. Start by assembling the body of the book. Stack the felt squares, or pages, together and using a hole punch, make four evenly spaced holes in each page. Six pages is a good length for your first time.
2. Using ribbon, tie the pages together, knotting one ribbon securely around each pair of holes.
3. Make the cover. You can cut out felt letters or use a fabric marker to write the title right on the felt.
4. Now, make a plan for each page. For a Passover book, choose a theme in keeping with the celebration. Here are some example pages to get the creative juices flowing:

• Moses in the Bulrushes: Using green and brown felt, make long fringes that children can run their fingers through to find the basket with baby Moses that is glued to the page.
• Parting of the Red Sea: sew a zipper onto two pieces of blue felt and glue the edges to the page. When you zip it up, it’s all blue water; when you unzip it, there are a row of felt Israelites crossing.
• Moses and the Ten Commandments: Used fabric glue to attach Velcro tape to three different shapes-- a rectangle, a circle and a square. Make a felt Moses holding the Ten Commandments written on three tablets of those same three shapes and attached the corresponding Velcro, so that children can match the shapes. (You can sew a little pocket on the back of the previous page to stash the shapes.)

It's fun to come up with your own variations!