DIY: Interactive Books for your Toddler

So I totally stole this idea from one of Shelby's Early Intervention teachers, but it's just too wonderful not to share! And I want to remember this activity b/c we spend A LOT of time on it as it is currently one of Shelby's faves. If you have a baby/toddler of your own or work with small children, this post is for you! If you don't fall into one of those two categories, this post will probably not interest you in the slightest...so I will apSo here we go...I'm sure all of you are familiar with Eric Carle's book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See. That book is the inspiration for both of these activities. To make the first activity, all I used was a package of velcro, the board book version of the book, and cards I had leftover from a board game I purchased for my classroom a few years back. {HERE is a link to the board game if you're interested, but you can make cards on your own--which is what I did for the second activity, and they'll work just fine, too.} Below is a picture of our board book & cards. You can see how I adhered velcro to the backs of the cards.

I stuck another piece of velcro to each page in the book, so Shelby can match the cards to the animals in the book as they appear. She LOVES it!

The next book/activity is very similar, but it's all DIY. I had most of the items on hand, so it was nearly free! I used the following items to make this next book: a bradded folder, plastic page protectors, cardstock, packing tape, & velcro. Using Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See as the inspiration, here is our interactive book Yellow Star Yellow Star What Do You See.


In the picture above you see the book on the left, and the plastic baggy to the right contains all of the shapes that Shelby uses to match up to the book. In the picture below, you can see what the inside of our book looks like. You can also the pieces of velcro where Shelby matches up the corresponding shapes.


Below are pictures of the end of our book. At the end of the Brown Bear book, there is a teacher & children. So at the end of our book, we used Mommy & Daddy to replace the teacher and we used Shelby to replace the kids. She loves seeing our pictures in the book! :)



When we first started doing these interactive books with Shelby, there was a lot of guiding. The first couple of times, we had to show her how to do it. Then we graduated to giving her the correct animal or shape to match to the page in the book. Then we were able to show her two or three animals/shapes, and she could pick the right one. But this has been such a fun & effective way to teach Shelby her animals, shapes, & colors...I highly recommend it! If you are interested in creating the shape book, feel free to leave a comment on this post and I would be happy to send you the Word document so you don't have to waste time recreating something!

And this is totally not an interactive book by any means, but it's another book that Shelby l-o-v-e-s. Using a free photo book coupon, I made Shelby a family book on Shutterfly and it's been great in helping her learn people's names in our family.

Click here to view this photo book larger

Shelby is genuinely loving learning these days, and the teacher part of my heart & the mommy part of my heart just can't get enough of it. Seeing kids learn something new is always an amazing thing, but I never knew how wonderful it would be to see my child learning!