Dry Erase Activity Books

Like most kids, my oldest boy has tons of energy. It is hard to keep him still because his curiosity drives him to explore every nook and cranny. So you can only imagine what it is like to try to have him sit reverently at church and not make too big of a ruckus. I have asked myself this question frequently: What will quietly entertain my son at church? And, that is when I saw found this great post about dry erase activity books. Credit must be given to Hannah because she shared this post on her Facebook page.

The post does an excellent job walking you through on how to make the books. The best part about this post is that she provides her copies of the books she made for her kiddos! This really made me excited because free printables helps save so much time.

Step 1:
Download the file for the activity book. Once the file was downloaded, I then went through the pages and kept the pages I liked, added some pages I wanted, and deleted the pages I didn't want. Like the blog post mentioned, there was plenty of pages to make three dry erase activity books. One thing I want to point out is to make sure each picture fits into the column or it will be cut off during the printing process.

Step 2:
Cut the printed pages in half and glue them together. I took them over to the copy center to get them laminated. I'm really blessed since I have a copy center practically next door to me.

Step 3:
Cut the laminated pages and hole punch. I decided to only do two hole punches because it was easier. My husband has an adjustable 3-hole punch made by Stockwell where you can adjust the punch holes. I adjusted them far enough in so the rings wouldn't go around the corner of the books. It was approximately 1.25 to 1.5 inches from the edges. The hole punching process was incredibly fast because I just had to insert the laminated paper to the end of the hole puncher and press down.

Step 4:
I assembled the activity books into themes. My themes were: religion, alphabet and numbers, and colors and trucks.

Do they really work?
Yes! The dry erase crayons is easily removed by a cloth. See below for the proof:

Overall thoughts:
I have to admit that I was probably more excited about these books than Monkey. As soon as I had them assembled, I had to test them out. It was so much fun coloring on them and then erasing what I colored. I am quite pleased to say that they were a big success in church. Monkey colored on them for more than half of the Sacrament meeting. I would totally recommend doing these books for your kiddos and even for yourself.