Day – 7 Write a Children’s Book & Addendum

Addendum
Though I wanted this to be a seven day a week project, it is just not going to work out that way. Unfortunately there are two people involved and the second person, my daughter, spends here weekends playing with her daddy, mom mom and gPop. She sees mommy all week, and is just not interested in sitting down with me for more than two minutes on the weekend. So from this day forward, the 365 days will be completed Monday through Friday. Thank you and enjoy your weekends!

Childrens Book

This was actually a three day project. LeeAnn may not always treasure it, but I know I will. It began with a series of tales I told to her as we traveled around in the car about a young princess named LeeAnn. She or my husband would shout out a topic and I would make up the story, the first one was about how a dragon got his fire back.

To make this project more about my toddler than me, I had her write the rough draft of the story. I then polished it up a little and began the illustrations. LeeAnn was then able to color the pictures and put in the stickers. Next we used glitter glue to make the first page fabulous. That was the end of day one. The next day was spent using glitter on the other seven pages. The third day was spent gluing in the printed text boxes.

This was a long, complex project. At the end I have a book written by my daughter, edited by me and illustrated by us both. I love it, but it was definitely a labor of love.

How to Make Your Own Story Book

Supplies

5 – 8 ½ x 11”sheets of scrap booking paper

1 – 8 ½ x 11” Heavy card stock

Paper cutter or scissors.

1 needle

Yarn

Glue

 1-2 8 ½ x 11” sheets scrap booking paper

Pencils

Pens

Crayons

Stickers

Glitter Glue

Instructions

-          Write your story – Have your child pick out who they want to be and help them think of a story they can go through in eight pages. Once complete smooth out the text and write it up.

-          Make you book. You can also buy small eight page scrap books at local crafting stores if you want to skip this part. Cut off 2 of the 8 inch width of the 5 scrap booking pages and card stock, making them 6 ½ x 11.

-          With the five sheets of scrap booking paper together, and the card stock on the outside, fold the longest edge in half to make a book. Using the needle, sew the fold binding with at least 8 stitches.

-          Begin by sewing from the outside to the inside of the book and end your stitches by coming from the inside to the outside.

-          Tie the two ends of your yarn together along the outside of the back.

-          Illustrate your book – don’t worry if you’re not the best artist, you may be able to find stickers that will help or approximate with stick figures. The point is to work with your child and keep them excited.

-          Have your child color the book. LeeAnn was too bust with the weekend to help much, after coloring the castle and the animals, I was told to color the princesses.

-          Stickers make great accessories, add color and cut down on the number of drawings you have to make, feel free to add as many or as little as you want.

-          Glitter glue adds great sparkle, but takes a while to dry, so be prepared to have it take a while. And yes as I type this I realized I could have made the pages and then put the book together, but we used a premade book, so it's a pain either way I’m sure.

-          To add text, you can write in the book or type the text, print it out and glue it in the book. It’s up to you, and your hand writing.