What is a Busy Book?

What is a Busy book you might ask? Well it’s essentially a felt activity book that is perfect to entertain children without the use of technology. You can keep it in the car and take it to doctors appointments, use it in the pram, at restaurants and on airplane trips. It’s various pages promote fine motor skills, cognitive skills and imagination and play. In Australia, the current recommendation is for no more than 2 hours of screen time per day for children, with screen time not recommended for children under 2 years.

This is where a Busy Book can come in handy, I have kids myself so I understand how difficult it can be to try and do anything in your day to day life with a child attached to you. It's not fun and trying to keep them entertained is hard!!!! I had to sit my son in the bathroom when he was younger with me just so I could have a shower and even then he would start to cry 5 minutes into it.

Busy books are often used to keep kids ‘quiet’ (well as much as you can with a child) That is how quiet activity books actually got their name, originally it was used to keep children quiet in a church.

Aside from being fun and entertaining there is a lot more benefits than just play. The felt activity book is not just another toy, a child who plays with a Busy book can develop so many great skills and the book can also help to improve fine motor skills.

1. Developmental benefits

• fine motor skills development

• hand-eye coordination

• problem solving

• attention

• imagination

• logical thinking

2. Learning skills

• mathematical (numbers and counting)

• creative skills

• colours

• sorting and matching

• shapes

3. Practical Life Skill

• buttoning

• zipper

• using snaps

• tying shoes

If you found this article helpful feel free to leave me a comment and also if you have any fine motor skill activities that you love list them below, I would love to hear about them.