Baa! Moo! Quack!

I made a farm page for Quiet Book, Part 2.  It was originally going to be a The Very Busy Spider page based on Eric Carle's book, with finger puppets for all the animals who come to ask the spider to play with them and then a "spin the web" piece where loops around the page could be used to thread a spider around the page. (Here's an example of what I mean.)  I decided that wasn't going to work for two reasons.  First, too complicated for a 21 month old.  Second, I loved how clean and pretty this page looked, my most professional looking one yet, and I didn't want to mess that up.  I will still take a crack at some web spinning activity for a quiet book page, but it'll wait.

Once I decided it wasn't going to be as true to The Very Busy Spider as I had planned, some other small compromises were made, at least for the time being.  There's no owl finger puppet yet.  He has a home under the top door on the barn, but I decided there were enough small pieces that were going to get lost on the plane already, and one more finger puppet could wait until I had time for it.  And the pockets made behind the grass (under the fences) where I expected to store the spider on her "fine, silky thread," are empty.  They'll be used to hold some other toys: a two-dimensional wooden tractor and some other farm animals from another of K's toys.

Here's the finished page

A couple of details to note: 

• The sun - there's a detail photo below.  The buttons are on strings threaded behind the sun and can pull away to show the sun "shining" down on the farm.  Then they're pulled back up with the threads above.
• Latch on the barn doors.  The felt hook is attached to the door on the right by the button, and swings down to hook around the button on the left.  
• The grass under the fences on both sides form the opening to a pocket under the barn.  

With the doors open

• Three finished finger puppets behind a wall of hay bales.  The pocket formed by the hay bales extends down to about an inch above the bottom of the page, giving the puppets lots of room for secure storage.
• You can see the rays of the sun extended
• The top door of the barn opens as well, with a pocket formed behind the black felt, thus hiding behind the puppets that are in the main barn area.  This pocket is where the owl will sleep, when I get around to making him.

Finger puppets.  Inspiration from here, here and here.  As with everything else I've been doing on these quiet books, I can't deny that much has been borrowed from other sources, but I do it all without using anyone's patterns, partly because I don't have a printer and partly because I have my own ideas about how things should look :)

I've since added wings to the duck and some reinforcement around the bottom of the horse, as it was made out of a much softer and thinner felt then the others.

Enjoy!