Bookmaking With Kids

Another book I often share with teachers in my workshops is Antoinette Portis’s Not a Box, a magical book about imaginative play.* It features an inventive bunny, a box and an unseen, somewhat clueless adult who asks questions. When Why are you sitting in a box? appears on one page, the bunny appears on the next, sitting in the box-as-race-car and replying indignantly, It’s not a box!

To me, it’s a wonderful reminder of the creative byways kids will wander down, given a chance, some time and a springboard—whether it’s a cardboard box or fixings for a handmade book.

Imagine my pleasure, during a bout of domestic divestiture, on discovering Ten Dots Can Be, a book made by my older daughter. Same principle as Not a Box and its successor Not a Stick, but pretend-published years and years before Portis came on the scene. My thanks to the creative teacher who provided her students with the black dots and the opportunity to transform them.

*Another book I like by by this author is A Penguin Story.

Click the link to see more pages from the Dot book. (more…)

Everyone’s fingerprints are unique. And when kids ink up their fingers and add prints to the page of a book or to a picture, it makes their handmade work that much more endearing. The pictures below show the cover of a book written and illustrated by a 2nd grader followed by a just-for-fun pageful of fingerprint critters. Note the wonderful misspelling in the lower left corner.

Using the ever-adaptable rubber-band binding, the 1st graders I’ve been working with this year made phone books for their final book-arts project. Lots of the kids added drawings to their covers. I particularly liked the one pictured at the top left (click for an enlargement) because it had the most detail: a cell phone in a charger, on a desk, with a task light!

Now take a look at the picture at the bottom right: Even at the end of 1st grade, friends is still a tricky word to spell!

To see pictorial instructions for making this book structure, click this earlier post.

The last stage of the long-running macaw project in Debra’s 1st grade classroom was the Really Important Part: reading and writing.

The students consulted lots of books, listened to Debra read aloud and watched a movie. Then they contributed to a giant list of newly acquired facts (below, left) and wrote drafts (like the one below, right), making sure to answer all the questions Debra had posed.

And finally they rewrote their corrected essays in folded booklets stapled into their Scenic Concertinas. Here’s one in its entirety:

The macaw’s habitat is the rain forest and the dry forest. Macaws eat clay, fruit and nuts. Macaws fly up to 35 miles per hour. They are endangered because people are smuggling them. This means they take them and sell them for money. Also they lose their home when the forest is cut down. Some humans are helping them by paying smugglers not to steal. Also, people take trips to see nature. This is eco-tourism. The macaws can use their toes to grip tree limbs and hang upside down. Some snakes and big cats can eat macaws.

For an up-close view, click each photo. And keep an eye out for some impressive vocabulary, including the bird’s Latin name, Ara Macao; ornithologist, deforestation, and even eco-tourism!

Read earlier, related posts here, here and here. And please click the link to see more pictures. (more…)

Right in time for Endangered Species Day yesterday at Lawton Alternative School, Debra’s 1st graders finished up a two-month project on macaws and put their colorful, fact-filled Scenic Concertina books on dis-
play. The kids even looked like macaws (!) for the day’s festivities … costumed in painted grocery bags they adapted as vests. Here are a few covers, completed books and vests. More details in the next few posts.

You can read about the earlier stages of this project here and here.

And please click the link for some great pix from Endangered Species Day. (more…)

I wish could receive a kid’s poem every day … the way I get a daily poem from The Writer’s Almanac in my email inbox. Young writers—even little kids just learning to write—often have a knack for a turn of phrase that’s unexpected, arresting, heartening.

Click the pictures at left and below to read some 1st grade poems “published” in the envelope-accordion books described in previous posts.

You’ve gotta love this description of outer space:

Stars are shooting
planets are grumbling
dust is everywhere

Or this take on spring flowers:

The flowers open like fireworks
They open fast
It goes like a firework
And it falls back down when spring is over.