Bookmaking With Kids

The Parade Ground at the Presidio of San Francisco was hands-on heaven for kids this past Friday. As part of the Presidio’s annual cele-
bration of its history, kids could listen to Ohlone stories and songs, dress up as 18th century soldiers, make an adobe brick, make yarn from lamb’s wool with a drop spindle, paint ceramic tiles like those unearthed at a Presidio dig, and, of course, make a book. And by presenting their handiwork to park rangers, kids could earn a Junior Ranger badge, iron-on patch and a passport stamp.

Several hundred kids made the books pictured above. They turned a die-cut map of the Presidio into a “cover” for an accordion book filled with coloring activities about the Ohlone, the Anza Trail, adobe buildings, the use of a matate to grind corn for tortillas and more.

Kudos to the Presidio Trust and Park Service staff who organized the event. And special thanks to my assistants—Emma, Sam, Katie and Megan—for their hard work with all the kids.

Whether your family is actually making a trip this summer, en-
joying a “staycation” or being armchair travelers, every kid
needs a passport!

My kids started making passports long before they needed the real thing, sparked by three examples.

The first was their father’s passport, its pages bursting with fascinating stamps accumulated on business trips.

The next was the Kids’ Passport they discovered when we first began visiting national parks. They desperately coveted those colorful stamps that conferred “You Were Here” status … and quietly despaired of ever getting enough stamps to give their passports that stuffed, well-traveled look. When they were a bit older, they were also inspired by the fabulous Top Secret Adventure kits from Highlights for Children.

So they began making their own—little booklets that were part passport, part photo album, part travel journal, part sketch book. Sometimes they were for real adventures, other times for imaginary journeys. Occasionally they were for invented personas, too!

Nothing could be easier: Kids just fold a couple of pages as a group and staple through the fold. Supply scissors, glue and collage materials like maps (free at AAA) and travel brochures (free at hotels, tourist spots and car-rental offices) and they’ll be good to go.

The passport pictured here is made from 5 x 8-inch index cards, folded in half. In it, my older daughter, then 12, was pretending to be a cat! She changed her name. She chose a destination reachable only by time-machine (Mesopotamia!). My favorite part is the reason she gave for “Purpose of Visit.” Click the image for an enlargement, and you’ll see her answer on the last line.

This post is part of an occasional series, Summer Book Projects. Please watch for more ideas in the weeks ahead.

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.

It’s almost time for the annual birthday celebration of the Presidio of San Francisco. There’ll be activities for all ages—re-enactments, crafts, storytelling, games, music, dancing, food and more beginning at noon on Friday June 25th and continuing until noon on Sunday June 27th.

Bookmaking With Kids will be presenting a terrific project from 12-3 p.m. Look for us under the tent near the parade-ground flagpole.

Click this link to find out about all the events planned for the weekend.

Every so often I look at the statistics about who uses this blog and I’m often surprised and pleased by discoveries to be found in the data.

My biggest kick of late was finding Bookmaking With Kids as a featured resource on a Czech blog! Scroll down and you’ll see me listed in the righthand column. And every time I post an entry, an updated blurb appears.*

I also discovered recent posts about Bookmaking With Kids on ABC Literacy Fun, Let’s Explore, TeachersFirst.com, and Kim & Karen: 2 Soul Sisters, among others. There are references to Bookmaking With Kids on The Cornerstone and on The R Teacher. And my blog appears as a resource at Wonder Farm, Playful Learning, Classroom Publishing, Kindergarten Chronicles, ESL Sites for Elementary Teachers, Kindergarten Community, Montessori Teacher Training, The Artful Parent and elsewhere.

*How’d I know this blog is written in Czech? I didn’t, but Google Translate did. You just enter some text you want to translate, it automatically detects the language and instantly supplies a (somewhat sketchy) translation.

I was poking around on the San Francisco Public Library web site, requesting books for myself, when I happened to wander over to the kids’ section. And wow, does it look good! The new look premiered a few months ago, and yet more goodies and resources are coming over the summer.

Colorful and uncluttered, the kids’ home page shows a fanciful San Francisco skyline with a cable car reading a book, the Twin Peaks’ tower, a sea lion sporting a head set, a pencil poised for homework, and a taxicab—all icons that link to key areas of the site. Hang around for a while and you’ll notice that the weather changes, and so does the light, depending on the time of day. The sound effects—a clanging cable car bell and a barking sea lion—are good, too.

I hope the pictures below will tempt you to explore the five main areas of the site. And if you’re not from San Francisco, don’t worry. Most of the site’s features are accessible to everyone—in English, Spanish and Chinese!

Among my favorite features:

• The Girls Worth Knowing book list on the Read page
• The Children’s Story Line and Speakaboo options on the Listen page, especially nice for pre-readers, emerging readers and kids learning English
• The SFS Kids area, where kids and parents can learn about the San Francisco Symphony, listen to instruments, make up a tune with The Composerizer, play excerpts on The Radio, and more (Make sure to click on Christopher Rouse’s Ku-Ka-Ilimoku, the last excerpt on Channel 1!)
• The various family features on the Grown Ups page, which deliver the best round-up I’ve seen of kid-friendly activities, places and events in San Francisco

Also on the Grown Ups page, My Little Rhyme Book, a download in English, Spanish and Chinese, has more than a dozen songs, rhymes and hand-
clapping chants. To turn the illustrated text into a little booklet, click this PDF, print it in landscape mode, double-sided, on 8-1/2 x 11 paper, and trim the height. Fold the pages as a group and secure them with a rubber-band binding and you’ll have a booklet that looks like the one you see at the left.

Kudos to the SFPL Web Services Team, their contracted web designer, and all the librarians who contributed to this fabulous resource!