Bookmaking With Kids

Just before Thanks-
giving I was privileg-
ed to share some of my bookmaking pro-
jects in a workshop called Book Arts for the Young Child. And now, having recovered from holiday mayhem, I wanted to give everyone a peek at our activities and to post some templates that make it easy to replicate the projects.

The venue was the Children’s Center at the San Francisco Public Library. (Thank you Christy, for scheduling and publicizing the workshop and for supplying terrific give-aways!) The 40 participants were teachers, substitutes and day-care providers for children as young as 2! And the topic was the whys and hows of making books with very little kids.

Here’s the “why” in a nutshell:

Bookmaking and kids are a magical combination. When kids make books by hand, they’re forging a personal connection to reading, to writing, to making art. Bookmaking connects children in a tactile way to the pleasures of listening to stories and later, to the pleasures of reading, writing, illustrating their work and sharing it with others. And when we encourage really young kids to play with “ingredients” like paper and scissors, crayons and stickers, ribbons and hole punches, we honor their instinct for the scribble writing and the pretend reading that are the natural starting points for emerging literacy.

We started with the simplest book possible, just a folded piece of paper. But for a little kid and first-timer bookmaker, folding a piece of paper is no mean feat. And for a teacher, it’s surprisingly hard work to describe and demonstrate the many steps we take for granted in that basic activity. Our one-page folded books included a Frame Book, a book based on Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and a barn-shaped book made from a die-cut red file folder, pictured in the thumbnail images above.

We also made one-page folded books tucked into a plastic box as a cover; rubber-band books; necklace books; paper-plate books; books with two holes punched along the spine and held together with pipe cleaners, prong fasteners and the little plastic clips used to seal bags of bread! Click the images below to see some of these projects.


For printable PDFs, click the highlighted text below. And watch future posts for more pictures of the books we had most fun making!
Frame Book template
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom template
Rubber-band book instructions

It’s hard to believe that such elegant bindings* are easy enough for 2nd graders to sew, but it’s true. The trick, of course, is practice. But how do you get kids to practice … willingly?

I’ve started to use sewing cards, with surprising success. Most kids have never seen such a thing, so they think they’re pretty nifty. Plus, kids get their own cards to personalize and to keep—and even a little bit of ownership usually helps engage them in a project.

The upper card shows the pattern of holes, the lower shows the sewing.

I cut the cards out of sturdy cardboard and I punch two sets of sewing stations (or holes) in each, one pattern on the left and a variant on the right. Click both cards for close-ups.

Once I’ve stepped kids through the sewing, they snip out their stitches and sew the card again … and again. When they feel confident, I go one of two routes.

If I’m working with younger students … (more…)

Just as school was winding down in June, my colleague Susie had the opportunity to teach bookmaking to grade-level lead teachers from the Redwood City elementary schools. More than 30 teachers participated in sessions designed for kindergarten, grades 1 & 2, 3rd grade, and grades 4–6. But in the interests of letting participants enjoy their summer vacations to the fullest, we didn’t do any workshop follow-up! Until now. The first day of the new school year seemed like a fitting time to post instruction sheets and templates so participants can start making books with their new students.

Susie chose book projects that were similar in design for all four sessions but with added challenges for students as they moved up through the grades. The books included different kinds of journals, pop-ups, accordion books and many variations of books made from a single sheet of paper. The photos show a collaborative kindergarten book of ABC pop-ups (C is for cake, D for dog, E for elephant and F for fish) and, at left, some of the participants at work (or is it play?).

For a list of PDFs you can download, please click the link. And if you have questions, please feel free to email Susie. (more…)

Inspired by the camaraderie and creative ferment of last month’s Summer Camp workshops, I envisioned writing a long series of posts, maybe even one about every nifty book we made(!), complete with photo, template and instruction sheet.

And then I got sidetracked by summer: the lure of a daily swim … the siren call of a stack of library books … the pleas-
ures of turning a superabun-
dant crop of Bleinheims into jam … just sitting in the garden when the sun finally appears in my foggy neighborhood at 6 each evening.

So in fact I’ve written a scant two posts about Summer Camp 2009! More will be forthcom-
ing, I promise. But for now, I’m still in slo-mo. For those of you feeling more energetic than I, here are more than 30(!!) templates and/or instruction sheets for many of the books we made. Click the link for the list of downloads. (more…)

If you visit the main branch of the Redwood City Public Library, you’ll find a display case filled with examples of the many books we’ll be making at Bookmaking With Kids: Summer Camp 2009.

We hope you can join us for some of our inventive how-to sessions from Monday June 22nd through Friday June 26th. Ideal for teachers, librarians, principals, reading specialists, arts educators, parents or home schoolers, these inexpensive summer-camp workshops are packed with ideas and inspiration, instantly do-able projects and easy-to-follow instructions.

There’s still time to register. Click here to learn more.

Our summer book-arts workshops are beginning to fill but there’s still time to register.

Bookmaking With Kids: Summer Camp 2009 runs from Monday June 22nd through Friday June 26th. It features 14 inventive how-to sessions packed with ideas and inspiration, instantly do-able projects and easy-to-follow instructions. Whether you’re a teacher, a librarian, a principal, a reading specialist, an arts educator, a parent or a home schooler—these inexpensive summer-camp workshops are for you.

And it’s in an especially great location—the new Redwood Shores Public Library—that’s an easy distance from San Francisco, the Peninsula, the East Bay and beyond.

Here are some useful links for learning about Summer Camp 2009:

• For an online round-up of all 14 workshops, click here.
• For a calendar that shows the class schedule at a glance, click here.
• For a registration form, click here.
• For a flyer with full descriptions of each session, click here.

Bookmaking With Kids: Summer Camp 2009 has a session for every age, from pre-K through high school, and for all areas of the curriculum, from language-arts to social studies to science. Here’s a complete list. Just click the highlighted text to link directly to information about that workshop.

Books from a Single Sheet of Paper
Fun with Collaborative Books
Phenomenal Pop-Ups
More Books from a Single Sheet
Bookmaking for Events
Paper Decoration for Bookmaking
Bookmaking With Envelopes
Room to Write: Sewn Pamphlets & More
Books for Budding Scientists
Easy-to-Make Japanese Bindings
The Littlest Bookmakers
Maps, Maps, Maps!
Teeny, Tiny Printmaking

Hope to see you June!