Making Books with Children

Making handmade books is easy and fun to do. Here are some simple ideas for books that the children can make with you!

We recently had a fun homeschooling session making some little blank books for our homeschooling activities.

We use little blank books all the time - for story writing, journaling, note-taking, scrapbooking or just doodling. I always try to make sure we have attractive books around for the children to grab when the creative urge strikes. 

Making Handmade Books

A pile of fresh new notebooks, felt-pens and stickers seems irresistible to children!

Making little blank books is easy and the children can help make their own. Here are our favorite methods. 

Simple Blank Books

The simplest and most rewarding type of notebook to make is to fold A5/Letter sized paper in half and staple down the edge. Fold carefully to make sure all the edges match. 

Four or five pages makes a book just big enough for a child's illustrated story!

I like to buy boxes of cheap notecards to use as covers, but cardstock also works well. These little books make nice gifts for homeschooling friends!

Paper Bag Books

Another fun way to make your own notebooks is to use brown paper bags as the cover. 

Cut down the long edges of the bag so it will open. Refold the bottom of the bag so the fold is hidden inside the covers. Use this fold to staple your paper to.

We love to leave the handles on our paper bag books. They are great to grab as you head out of the house. Mobile notebooks!

Imaginative Bookmaking

Be imaginative in your book making. A special cover inspires special writing or drawing! Almost anything can become a cover - fabric, leaves, pieces of bark. 

We like to make little fabric books - cut pieces of plain fabric with pinking shears and sew down one edge. As well as writing - these fabric books are good for sewing in!

How to Use Them

These books are perfect for :

Making a homeschooling ideas daybook.

These creative writing activities for kids.

In your lapbooking projects.

For kids diary writing.

Making Online Books

There are several online programs available for making online books - and then having them printed and bound.

We wrote and printed our own books in my kids writing lesson.

Book Making Book Reviews

There are several lovely books available to help making books with children a delight. Two I borrowed recently are :

Handmade Books for a Healthy Planet by Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord contains sixteen projects using recycled materials. It shows you how to create books from around the world - an Adinkra cloth book from Ghana and a Math Slat Book from China as examples.

I really liked that this book covers both geography and history alongside your bookmaking projects - it even includes story book suggestions for each of the projects. The books themselves are inventive - but not too difficult to do.

Big Book of Books and Activities by Dinah Zike has hundreds of ideas for making small books and foldables.

It is packed with black and white pictures and illustrations, which makes it easy to follow.

If you are making a lot of lapbooks with your children and want to branch out to more exciting mini-books and envelopes, then this book would give you lots of ideas.

I hope these ideas for making books with children inspire you to try them out. Do let me know how you get on!

If you enjoyed making simple notebooks, why not take it further and try some book binding. There are some nice kits available on Amazon to get you started.

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