Making Books

We’ve had a few rather rainy days lately, which is great for the gardens, but not so great for the children who are spending a lot of time inside.  Sometimes we’re able to find creative ways to spend the day, and other times the Littles ask too many times to watch a movie.  While I don’t mind a little bit of supervised and selected movie watching, sometimes we get into a pattern of watching too much, so I’m always looking for new ideas.

One idea isn’t new to us but had been forgotten for a long time.  Several years ago, my Middle daughter made a book in a co-op class.  A few years ago both my Middles made books with a different co-op class.  Those books have been fondly remembered for years, so when I was trying to come up with things to do for the Littles, I remembered the books.  They love to write stories and draw pictures, and we’re often finding pieces of paper all over the house with parts of their stories.  I ordered several Bare Books to keep on hand (I like these), and as soon as we had a very rainy day I pulled them out.  Emma and Sophie spent hours working on their books.

The great thing about these blank books is that they’re always age appropriate.  Emma, who is working on her handwriting and loves to tell stories, filled her book with a story about fairies.  Sophie, who gets frustrated with her limited spelling because needs to ask how to spell so very many words, has been working on her drawing skills and filled her book with pictures of unicorns.  She even brought her book to church and quietly worked on her illustrations for an hour there.  Silas, well, he doesn’t really like pencils or crayons.  So he quickly filled a few pages with some “words” and pictures.  He brings his book to each of us in turn and tells us the story he has written, though it does seem to change with each telling.