Sophie's Velcro Busy Book

In preparing for baby boy's pending arrival, I have been trying to gather activities and things for Sophie to do since she will be having to adjust to not being the only child.  I'm not sure how she will handle having her momma-time shared with someone else, especially one who takes so much time.  One of the ideas I ran across was about a velcro busy book, which I read about here.  I didn't see any way to print out things from there, so I set about making my own version.  Not everything is exactly as she did it, but I used her book for inspiration and loved some of her ideas.  Here is what we ended up with:

The cover

Blank here, but for her name (as seen below).

So that she can work on spelling her name correctly.

Super simple color matching page

Shape matching.  Can work on colors, too.

Dress up page.  Sophie's favorite page!

Here are the girls dressed up.

 The result is a short book, but since Sophie loves the dress up page so much, she has already spent a lot of time with it.  I hope to add more to it as I come up with more ideas, but this was super easy to put together.   I created the pages in PowerPoint, printed them out, laminated them, then cut out what was necessary.  I then added velcro to the parts needing to be attached.  I actually used 2 types of velcro.  I used dots for most of it, as can easily be seen on the stop light and shape matching pages.  For the dress up page and the pages that are the backside of the previous page, I used strips of velcro cut down to the size I needed.  I punched holes in the side, added book rings, and voila!  Instant busy book!

Compilation note: In order to try to get the most out of my velcro pieces, I alternated the sides on each page.  For example, on the name page, the velcro stuck to the paper is the rough half.  The soft half is on the letters.  For the next page, I put the soft half on the paper, then the rough on the moveable pieces.  This was because the ones on the paper would need double the amount, a holding piece and then where the piece should be moved to.  Maybe I put much more thought into this than necessary, but it ended up saving me some velcro and I feel I put what I had to better use. 

Interested in making one?? It wasn't really too difficult to create the pages in PowerPoint, but to save you some time, you are welcome to start with my pages I created.  Please just use them for personal use and nothing more.  Just let me know you want the document and I'll email it to you.  I'm not really sure how to add the link to download it on here.  If I figure it out, I'll add it as a link on here.  For the dress up page, I just printed from this website and used theirs.  There are a few varieties and even the one I used has more to it than you see here.  I was keeping it simple.