DIY: Build a Blank Book for a Budding Writer
Once kids understand that books are objects that contain words and/or images organized onto pages, and that pages are generally looked at in a particular order (reading and repetition reinforce these concepts–if you’re interested in ideas, here’s my latest list of good books for good kids), it can be fun to empower them by giving them a blank book all their own to write and illustrate. And when you do this, it’s nice to not necessarily have to buy a commercially-made blank book, but to make your own out of scraps around your house, also teaching your children how books are created and demonstrating how they, too, can create what they need.
You will need: one piece of 8.5″x11″ cardstock (here’s an example), new or recycled from a cereal box, old book, sturdy magazine cover, etc.; 5 pieces of 8.5″x11″ typing paper, new or scrap; needle and thread or sewing machine with a sturdy sharp needle installed
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1. Fold your cardstock in half–this will be your book’s cover. You may use decorative scissors to cut a fancy edge on it, if you wish.
2. Fold your five pieces of typing paper in half and nest them inside your cardstock cover.
3. Sew straight up the fold line from end to end, sewing through all the pages and the cardstock. Either use a backstitch or running stitch if sewing by hand, or use a loose tension and a wide stitch on your sewing machine–I generally save old sewing machine needles just for this project.
4. Trim your thread, trim any typing paper pages that might stick out past the cover, and hand your new blank book off to someone special.
To make this an even more eco-friendly project, recycle all your paper materials from other sources. Small children likely won’t care if they’re scribbling on junk mail or newspaper pages, and perhaps neither will you, if you’re making a book just for lists or ideas or quick notes to yourself. Older children can be intrigued by the idea of ferreting out old paper to repurpose into books, and might particularly enjoy making pages out of graph paper, coloring pages, or wrapping paper.
So that’s how I encourage my budding writers–how do you encourage yours?
Love this post. My 4 year old daughter is a budding writer. She loves to keep a notebook just like mom. We’ll have to try to make one like this. Thanks!
We make “journals” frequently with cereal box covers and recycled paper insides (if we don’t have blank recycled paper around, we use recycled printer paper… the only kind I buy!). We make different sizes depending on what materials we have available. The kids also love to decorate the cover using leaves, twigs, other scrap paper, etc…
To make larger books (more pages inside), we sew sheets together by fives and stick the extra booklets inside the original, then we use a piece of hemp cord (running down the inside binding and tied on the outside) to hold it all together.
If I am writing something (often times I put the laptop down and just grab a good ol’ pen and paper) my daughter loves to copy what mommy is doing. Also, at her preschool, each child has his/her own journal. The children can draw in them, or, the children tell a story out loud while the teachers write it down (in the kids’ words)for them. They then act out the stories in their journals. I look forward to saving my children’s journals forever.
These have also become part of our handmade holiday gifts–a few blank books (in the kid’s favorite colors, if I know it), a crayon or colored pencil roll, and some art supplies.
We don’t do coloring books, but I was thinking that you could also make your own pretty awesome coloring books with this method and the booklet printing function on your printer, if you did.
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