Making Books to Document Your Learning

My kids love to make books!  Our house is quickly filling with their masterpieces.  It is our very favorite authentic writing activity.

Most of the time we make very simple books with hand-drawn covers, but recently we decided to explore some different book cover options.  Take a look at the books and journals we made to document our nature and science observations.

MAKING BOOKS

Full Disclosure:  This post is sponsored by Cricut and contains affiliate links.  All opinions expressed are my own.

So, our friends at Cricut recently sent us the Cricut Explore One™ and we have been having so much fun using it to create book covers.  Not only are there endless design possibilities, but it is super easy to use.

First, we went into the Design Studio software on the computer and picked a pre-made book cover and added it our design board.  We added a few cut-outs and text we wanted cut out.

The favorite part for the kids was picking the colors for the covers.  We  used colored cardstock for a more durable cover. The cool thing about the Cricut is that you can “attach” the layers on your canvas so all the cuts will take place at the same time. This allows you to arrange different colors on your cutting mat.

Here are just a few of the books we have made.

MOON JOURNAL

Each evening the kids like to look out the window and find the moon.  They notice the shape and document their observation in the journal.

I purposely adjusted the template on the Cricut Explore One to be the same size as a  4×6 index card so that I could use index cards as the pages of our journal.

MY BOOK OF FLOWERS

There are so many beautiful flowers in bloom.  My kids have been enjoying learning the names of each type.  They also are loving using a camera.  So we are compiling their photographs in this keepsake book.

BIRDS

A few years ago the family gave me a bird feeder for my birthday. We set it up right outside the window near our breakfast table.  We see finches, cardinals and sparrow eating the sunflower seeds.  Now, we keep our bird book on the table to record observations about the birds along with some of these bird books for kids.

I love the masking tape binding on this book.  It is one of the easiest ways to bind books so they lay flat when you open them.

Whether you are creating journals to record observations, writing stories or designing photo albums, it is always fun to create eye-popping covers.  The Cricut Explore One™ makes it so easy to do!  Stay tuned for some more fun literacy related posts using this tool.

**Right now Cricut is having a 7 weeks 70 giveaways extravaganza.  Be sure to enter!**

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