How to Make a Kids Activity Book & Educational Placemat Perfect for Breakfast Time

One thing that most kids love to do while eating their breakfast cereal is to read the back of cereal boxes. And, why not? The colorful characters, bold robust print and fun activities can hold your child’s attention the entire time they are eating their cereal. And, even more surprising than that is the fact that a child will read and reread that same cereal box over and over again until the entire box is empty.

It’s crazy, really. Most days I have to beg my 12 year old to pull himself away from the video games to do some reading, however, give him a bowl of cereal and he searches for anything in a 5 foot radius around him to read.

Don’t misunderstand me…. I love that my kids love to read something during breakfast. Truthfully, I am thankful they love to read… period.

Who knew cereal boxes could be so fun and educational!? But, we all know that it isn’t the box that holds their focus, but instead the activities, colors and bold text that holds their attention for that long.

Coming to the conclusion that breakfast time means children are more eager to read, more easily focused and ready to absorb I took advantage of this and began making my kids fun activity books and educational placemats to use during breakfast time. Not only do the kids love the fact that they have tons of fun activities, but I’m thrilled to be able to buy cereal in bags instead of boxes….. less packaging to dispose of which means better for the environment.

Here I will show you how to make your own educational placemats and kids activity books perfect for your child to read while eating his breakfast cereal. The idea is so simple, but the education and fun will last a long time.

How to Make a Kids Activity Book & Educational Placemat

Kids Wipe-off Place Mats

The supplies you will need are as follows:

• Laminating – Hot laminating pouches with a Laminating Machine or Self Seal Laminating (no laminating machine needed). This is what makes the activity books and placemats wipe-clean from milk spills.
• Wipe-off Crayons or Wipe-off Markers – Your children can use these writing utensils to write on their activity books and place mats and easily wipe them off.
• Fun activities, puzzles, stories, and Educational Worksheets – You will find out to locate these items in Step 1.
• Computer, printer and paper

Kids Activity Books

You will need the same supplies as the placemats plus the following:

• A 1″ binder – to hold your activity sheets together in a book fashion
• Hole Punch

What is so cool about making your own place mats and activity books for your children is that you can design them to meet your child’s educational level, age, skills and what the child enjoys. So, ask your child to help design it with you…. make it a fun family project.

Step 1 – Find activities

Great places to find fun activities to help build your Kids Activity Book and Placemat

• Sunday Paper – The Sunday Newspaper has great comic strips. If you have a child that knows how to read then comic strips are a perfect filler for this project. Cut out some comic strips and tape them on a piece of paper…. the size you are using for this project. The newspaper also has puzzles as well.
• School Backpacks – I don’t know about you, but when I go through my children’s school backpacks I always find a tons of undone worksheets and activities sent home from the teachers. These are also great ideas to laminate and let the children read or work on during breakfast. Perfect fun & educational activities for kids.
• School Websites – Most schools have their own websites and many of them will have links to educational websites that they use at school with your children. Many of these educational websites will have printable worksheets and activities to assist your children will their studies. If you are unsure whether your School District has a website give them a call. I am sure they will be happy to assist you.
• Children’s Activity Sites – There are tons of educational sites on the Internet that offer free printables. Find things that your child will be interested in and print off a bunch. Laminate and you have yourself an activity book that’s completely wipe-off.

Fun Activities and Puzzles for Young Children

• Find-a-Words
• Dot-to-Dots
• Hidden Objects
• Mazes
• Spot the Difference

More Challenging Activities and Puzzles for Older Children

• Optical Illusions
• Crossword Puzzles
• Logic Puzzles
• Riddles

Educational Activities for Kids

• Telling Time
• Short Stories
• Addition Worksheets
• Subtraction Worksheets
• Multiplication Worksheets
• Division Worksheets
• Algebra Worksheets
• Word Problems

Now, these are just ideas. You don’t have to limit your choices to just the ideas above…. use your imagination. Or, better yet, let you children tell you what he wants.

Step 2 Print off the Kids Activities

Kids Activity Books

• Decide how large you want the activity book. Do you want it all Find-A-Words? Do you want it all Short Stories? What are you including in this book?
• Books are best when there is a front & back to each page. In order to be environmentally friendly I would suggest using one printer paper and printing on the front and back. Most printers have this ability… you just might need to do it manually. Check your printer’s handbook to find out how to do this.
• Once you have everything printed make sure it is in the order you would like and you are ready for the next step.

Kids Placemats

• Open up your favorite Word Processor. If you don’t have one already on your computer there are a couple of online word processors you can use for free. Try Zoho Writer or Google Docs.
• Open up a blank document page on your Word Processor and place the activities, clip-art, puzzles, short stories, riddles…. or whatever you choose onto the blank document.
• You might find that an easier way to insert the puzzles into a blank document is to save them as images first.

Here is an easy way to find puzzle images perfect for your kids placemats.

• Go to Google Image Search and Search for Printable Puzzles. You will see image shots of puzzles that you can print. You should be able to locate plenty of puzzles to put on your placemat. You can search for other things too. If you want to find logic puzzles you can search for that in Google Image Search as well.

• Once your find the thumbnail image of a puzzle that looks like something you would like click on it…. doing so will take you to the site. However you will still be in Google Image Search in the top frame and the site on the bottom. You will see what I mean by the image below.

• Once you click on “See Full Size Image” the image will appear on its own on the web page…. This is the image you would use on your placemat. See, the image below shows that the puzzle in its actual size and it will be perfect for a kids placemat. They can see it enough to do it and yet small enough that you will be able to add plenty of more kids activities to the placemat.

• Continue doing the above and simply use whatever Word Processor software you are using to add your puzzles, short stories and activities to your document. You can add bright clip-art too to liven it up as well. Feel free to use your imagination.
• When you are happy with how it turned out it is time to print off the masterpiece.

**Note – Using these images for personal print-offs for your family should not be a problem. After all, the whole purpose of their website is to offer its viewers printable puzzles. It is still a good idea to make sure that their website allows using their images for personal use.

Step 3 – Laminate

Kids Activity Books

• Laminate each page of the activity book.

• Punch holes in each laminated page.

• Put the page into the 3-ring binder and your book is complete and ready for use.

Kids Placemats

• Once laminated the placemat is complete and ready to go. Check out my placemat design:

In conclusion

Breakfast time is the perfect time for your children to absorb. They are well rested, they are being satiated, they are happy. Your children crave using their minds while eating their breakfast cereal. Give your children exactly what they want… fun activities, kids educational puzzles, and silly stories. It doesn’t have to be on a cereal box for our kids to read…. it just needs to be entertaining.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 22nd, 2008 at 3:07 pm and is filed under Kids Activities, Kids Cereal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.