Book Making Addicts

My kids love to make books. In fact, I don’t even try to conserve paper anymore. What’s 500 sheets a month compared to cultivating a love of creative writing, right? (relax, 500 is a slight exaggeration!)

Since they were little, my girls have been putting picture books together–letting me write the captions till they were able to do it themselves. Often they’ve shaped the pages after their subject of choice: a rocket-shaped book featuring the planets, an oval ladybug book with a red and black construction paper cover…

Most recently, my six year old decided she’d make an “easy reader” book for her younger cousin featuring the “sh” phonogram. You know how those early readers repeat letter blends over and over? Well, six year old’s book featured “Shelley, the shy sheep”. What a blast she had coming up with a list of “sh” words to feature in her six page book. And I was secretly pleased because we’d incorporated planning/logic, reading, writing, penmenship and art all into one fun project that my six year old most definitely didn’t even think of as schoolwork! (Shh!)

You may have an older child who could brainstorm ten nouns, ten verbs, fifteen adjectives and several adverbs and then make them work in a short story.

I just taught a spelling rule class to our homeschool group in which I had each child create a special spelling rule book. This is something our Spell to Write and Read curriculum has had us do each year. You’d be amazed at how much my children enjoy filling up this notebook. Here’s how:

• The first page is always the “signature page”. Each month they write their first, middle and last names–their “John Hancocks” if you will. This is a fun way to see their handwriting improve over the year…not to mention a future keepsake!
• A big portion of the book is for that year’s spelling words. I dictate them sight unseen, they’re written into two neat columns and the space at the bottom of each week’s words is reserved for cursive sentences featuring as many of those words as possible–thought up, of course, by the students!
• The last half of the notebook are for two things:

1. Collections–each collection gets its own page…abbreviations, homonyms, synonyms, antonyms, suffixes, prefixes, words that rhyme, names (whatever strikes your child’s fancy…after all, this is developing a love for and a knowledge of the English language!)
2. Spelling rule illustrations–we make a page for each rule and showcase words to go along with it. As I mentioned before, our curriculum is set up this way. If I teach the Five Types of Silent Final E, we then collect those five types, and organize them into columns with special markings.

Another homeschooling friend of mine loves “lapbooking”. Those lapbookers “in the know” always recommend Dinah Zike’s books .

I’d love to hear how the writing bug bites at your house!