Quiet Toys as Easy as 1-2-3

When my children were young I would sometimes let them bring one toy to play with during family church time but they still weren't very quiet. My son would make action  figure sounds, or my daughter would pretend out loud. Sometimes it was embarrassing, and we were always afraid of taking away from the spirit of the meeting.

But President Monson said once in a Stake Conference, "Parents, don't worry that your children are not quiet during meeting times, we have to remember that they are big spirits in tiny bodies full of wiggles." We all laughed. But we still wanted to teach our children that they needed to be quiet and reverent at church.


So we went to coloring books or reading books quietly. That worked but never lasted the whole time of the family meeting. Then one day someone behind us let my children play with a quiet toy that they had made. It was awesome and my kids loved it.

Creating a Sunday bag is a good idea that can be helpful in keeping little ones quieter. A couple of treats, mess free, are good starters. Some picture books are good during the passing of the sacrament.

You can create your own sacrament books by finding pictures of the things Jesus did while on this earth. Put them inside a clear page holder and then put them inside a small binder. You could even create a book of nature (animals, flowers, etc) doing the same thing.

Here are some ideas that I have found for making quiet time toys. I hope they are helpful and easy as 1-2-3 to create.

Make a felt play board, the instructions are as easy as 1-2-3:
1) find a small box with a lid.
2) glue a piece of felt to fit the inside of the lid
3) cut out different kinds of felt pieces to create pictures, they store inside the box

 Make a seek and find bag:
1) take a zipper pencil bag with a window in it
2) fill it with beads and misc shaped items, shake it up good, after it is zippered
3) make list of the misc items for your children to seek for, while looking through the window,  among the beads, make sure you put in enough beads in it to make it a little challenging for the kids to find.

Lace Cards
1) Create a few patterns like the one in the picture and create cut outs from foam squares
2) Use a single hole punch and spread wholes about an inch apart.
3) Get shoe string laces to guide in and out of holes.

This last one is a Popsicle stick puzzle:
1) Paint Popsicle stick several different colors
2) create designs on white paper squares using different colors to match Popsicle sticks.
3) have children try to create the design on the paper using the Popsicle sticks.

Well, those are just a few ideas, there are tons more that are so easy to make and helpful in quiet time needs. Have fun creating!!!

Cute Sewing Ideas

Well...I'm back. I have excuse after excuse why I shouldn't continue this blog but I keep coming back to "I have to keep doing this."

So here I am, again. In reviewing the past blog posts I see that the most view posts were relating to crafts and food. SO I will post those kinds of things as long as you are willing to also view one of my spiritual posts as well, deal?

I haven't pins in awhile either so I decided to try and catch up on some and I found these cute ideas to sew. I think they are easy to do but honestly I haven't tried them yet. Let me know how they come out for you; what was easy and what was hard. Have fun!!!

This first one looked like a fun idea. I usually just stick business cards from those I meet with in a pocket of my purse, then when I go to look for them, I have to shuffle through everything, this cute little pouch could probably save me a lot of trouble.

Zipper-card-pouch

This looked cute. I looked it as a diaper bag first then said, "Nahhhh, it's cute as just a plain bag."
I was looking for something to carry my family history stuff in for when I go to a Family History Center to do research, or to take with me when I go Dead People Hunting. It also works as a Graggy Bag (my grandson named me Graggy instead of Granny). I could use it to put coloring books and supplies, treats for road trips with my Graggykids, just a thought.

Diaper/Messenger Bag

How about making a super cute scripture bag for your scriptures?

Scripture Bag

This looked so cute that I just had to add it to the list.

 Mini wallets