Activity Book: R is for Reef

All Right! Here I am again with my second installment to my Activity Book! I decided to skip a lot of the alphabet and work on my letter R page. For the letter R I went the word Reef. I just like how bright the ocean is and how there's a lot of movement with fish. And I just thought it would make a really neat activity page for the book. (Plus my boy is a surfer so I had to make a page for him!)

Here's What You Need:

• Fish Buttons (I used these ones here)
• Various Colors of Felt
• Buttons
• Scrap Fabric
• Embroidery needle and thread
• Scissors

Here's How You Do It:

As always my first step is to make a brief blueprint of what you want. Since I decided on a reef theme, I also went ahead and took a quick look at reef pictures. Here's the reef picture that inspired my the most

(Photo from Inhabitat.com)

And here's my rough blueprint:




The next step is to start building your reef. I traced out a rough outline of rocks onto some leftover Minky fabric I had. I cut it out and used all the parts to create a layered reef effect around the felt. I then placed my fish buttons on some yarn and attached them over around the felt area



Next I traced out a letter R in felt and sewed it onto the bottom along with the words is for Reef. And then I slowly cut out pieces of coral and placed them around the reef. At this point I played with my coral placement a whole lot. And I even moved my fish a couple of times just so I was able to get the reef effect I was looking for. And then I added some assorted buttons I have that looked like shells around reef.

Here's what my final page looks like:



It ended up a little busier than I would like, but its a coral reef afterall. so I guess its all right if its busy page.


Optional: I created a shark finger puppet so that there was something to push the fish around in the reef. Or just to swim around it. You can find how to make it here:

Shark Finger Puppet