Making Mini Storybooks
For those of you who have followed Playful Learning over the years, you know that I am a huge fan of having a variety of attractive blank books at the ready for the developing writers in our lives. Randi from Swoon! is with us today to share a great tutorial for making lovely, handmade, mini storybooks…
This past summer my sister came home after living abroad for a year. She brought my oldest daughter (Ellie, age 4) a book she had made while away. She had written a story about my daughter and drawn little pictures on each page. Ellie has been dragging that little book around with her ever since! When I saw how fascinated she was with stories, I decided it would be fun to make up some of our own. Can you imagine how great it would be to come home from school and see a stack of these little books waiting for you?
My daughter doesn’t write words yet, but I can see how this activity encourages her to make connections. The first time we made one of these together I asked her what she wanted to write on each page and went through the words with her as I wrote them. She was thrilled to be in control of the story, and wrote it about herself (of course!). I’m looking forward to the day she can write stories of her own. My younger daughter (Addie, age 2) wasn’t really into writing a complete story, but told me to write a description of each of her drawings on the tops of the pages. I love to hear what they’re thinking and what they want to write about. I suspect I’ll be keeping these little books for a long time!
Would you like a make a few of these yourself?
Gather one piece of white card stock, a paper trimmer (or scissors), glue, a ruler, and some pretty paper for the cover (I downloaded mine from here and here).
1. Cut your piece of card stock in half lengthwise, then fold each piece in half.
2. Open one of the pieces of card stock and apply glue to the right side of paper.
3. Turn second piece of card stock over and stick left side of fold to the glue you just applied in step 2 (see photo) to form an accordion style book.
4. Cut your piece of pretty paper down to 4.25″x5.5″ and glue to the cover of your book.
5. Use a ruler to add a few lines at the top of all five pages.
Hopefully your older children will enjoy writing and illustrating their own storybooks as much as my little ones did. These books include five small pages, but you can add as many pages as you need by repeating steps 1-3. Happy story writing!
