Bookmaking With Kids

This post, inspired by a New York City teacher doing a Colonial unit with her 1st graders, is the second of four exploring book structures that are well-suited to compare/contrast reports.

Consider the File-Folder Book! It’s easy to make and uses easily scrounged and/or inexpensive materials: file folders, colored paper, a two-hole punch and two-prong fasteners.

For this book, I usually precut each group of colored paper to a predetermined length and have kids sort them into the correct order. One half of the book could be colonial, the other half contemporary. Each color represents a particular topic, both then and now; green for clothing, say, and blue for schooling.

If you’re lucky enough to scrounge two-pocket folders (of if a parent donates enough two-pocket folders), you could make the books in the same manner but with the added fun of having pockets to house “artifacts” made by the students, such as a hornbook!

Of the four book possibilities (counting the Yakety Yak book), I’d say this is the easiest, followed by the Staggered Page Book, followed by the Dos-a-Dos book, and finally the Yakety Yak book.