dry erase quiet books for church (or other quiet times) customized to your needs!

the other day i was cruising around on pinterest and came across a pin for dry erase quiet books.

you can make these books for anything.  it doesn't have to be for church stuff.  you could print pages with a child's name to help them practice writing, or it could just be coloring pages or whatever.  the possibilities really are endless.

here is my version and what i did.

all you need for this project is

1. a 3 ring binder
2. sheet protectors
3. dry erase markers or crayons
4. pictures from the friend magazine (or anything really)

i had plenty of random 3 ring binders hanging around as well as some sheet protectors.  i had a few dry erase markers, but they were the fatter kind, so i grabbed a pack of skinnier ones while i was grocery shopping.  I also picked up a 3-ring binder pocket to hold the markers.  for an eraser, i just used a folded paper towel.

for the pictures, you can either round up your old friend magazines and tear out the pages or you can print them from the friend website, which is what i chose to do.  the easiest way i found to do this is to:

• go here and click on the issue that you want to print from.
• at the top of the page near the month and year of the issue, click on the download button (see below for a picture).  click on the download button and choose a .pdf format. this will download the whole issue to your computer in a .pdf format that you can scroll through the pages and print the ones you want.   when you are done, just erase the .pdfs from your computer.

• print as many pages as you want.  i printed the coloring pages, hidden picture pages, and the fun stuff pages.  you can do as many as you want.  i did about 2.5 years worth to make 4 good sized books.

once you have them printed, put them in the sheet protectors in your binder.  i sorted my pages according to age level.  my youngest only has coloring pages in her book.  the other books have a couple of coloring pages but are mostly filled with activity pages.

my finished books

in the original pin, she had also purchased dry erase crayons.  i didn't see any of those at the grocery store, but you can pick some up on amazon here.

**Update 07/27/13 - went to staples and picked up some of the dry erase crayons and they are awesome! definitely worth looking into getting some of those if you are going to make a dry erase book for a younger child.

i did a test run of the dry erase coloring book this past sunday with my youngest.  she did great with it but i think i will definitely look into the dry erase crayons.  i was a little worried about her drawing on herself or the church benches and hymnals with the markers.

i didn't bring the other books for the older kids because as a rule, we don't allow the older kids to draw and such at church.  they will get to use their books for general conference sunday and stake conference.