I have been wanting to make something to entertain Caida at Church since FOREVER, and with subbing being slow this week I finally got my chance! It's not really anything special, but I am in LOVE with it, anyway...and want to make one for ME now, too!
Here's a quick tour:
The binder cover, all pink, of course. :) The swoopy font is called "Before the Rain" and the open font below it is called "{skinny} jeans"...I just colored it in with a sharpie.
Inside is, of course, all pink, too! A pink pencil pouch filled with a few pencils, twistable crayons and colored pencils (she's one of the cool kids now :), and dry erase markers. Behind it, a pink folder filled with...
Coloring pages! Random abstract designs are on the left (more for when I color with her), and things from the
Friend are on the right. P.S. Almost EVERYTHING I have is from
the Friend online, or old copies of the
Friend or
Ensign we'd saved. I love it! I wish Caida were a *little* older, or a slightly better reader...but I still found plenty of age-appropriate games she could do independently, so I'm happy.
Then, behind it, there are these tabbed page dividers. I found activities and stories I thought she could enjoy on her own and laminated them...I'm a crazy person and color-coordinated everything. You certainly don't have to! Laminating is awesome, though, because she can do those activities again and again with those dry erase markers I got her.
The purple section is for mazes...all with a church-related theme, of course.
The blue section is for word searches.
The green section is for hidden pictures. Since she's not a super-strong reader, I made two copies of the hidden pictures and cut out everything she was supposed to find from one, placing them around the picture with a label so she can learn the words and see what she's got to find. I am super happy with how these came out...and *I* got to play a little as I found everything and put it together, too!
The yellow section is for miscellaneous activities...like matching games, drawing, connect-the-dots, and so on.
And the pink section is for stories and pictures.
I loved these picture stories when I was a wee tot!
I wanted Caida to have her own pictures of things that are important to our faith, as she is preparing to be baptized this year! It's also great to have stuff like that around to keep sacrament more reverent. She loves my gospel art book, but she's always asking me "What's this? What's that?" Not so reverent. So I found pictures of all the most important stuff (that I didn't think she knew much about) from old issues of church magazines, stuck on a traceable title for each page (it was in a font literally called "trace"...which will be great for those dry-erase markers!), and wrote a sentence or two about the topic that she could (mostly) read all by herself.
Here are the "Plan of Salvation" and "Joseph Smith" pages.
Here are the "scriptures" and "baptism" pages.
You get the idea. :) Like I said, it's nothing fancy, but I think it'll help her stay entertained in a more reverent way during sacrament meeting as she learns more about the gospel of Jesus Christ...and if I just *have* to help her, it'll be fun for me, too! And laminating everything means I don't have to keep running out to make copies of everything...except the coloring pages. If you want, you could laminate those, too, and give the kids dry erase crayons...but Caida doesn't like the texture of coloring that way. I can't wait to add to this binder as the she grows up. And if we get to start doing FHE with her, I now have some great resources to get started!
Happy crafting!
