I thought I’d share a little project I just finished teaching in the local libraries to parents and young children. These Alphabet Books are a nice afternoon craft that doubles as a learning tool.
The construction couldn’t be simpler. First, we took a sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 copier paper and made it into a small 8-page booklet. You can see a great video on how to do this at Pocket Mod (scroll down on that link).
(While you’re there, make yourself some Pocket Mods! They’re awesome! But I digress….)
Anyway, after you’ve folded up the interior pages, you can staple them into a pretty cover you’ve cut from scrapbook paper. I printed some great big letters from my computer so folks could cut them out and glue them to the covers. For the one-hour class, we made three books: A, B, and C. But over time, you could work your way through the whole alphabet.
With the books made, the fun really begins. I gave the parents and kids a pile of old magazines. The kids looked through and found pictures of things that started with the letters on those book covers. Then they could cut the pictures out and paste them into their books.
The kids in my classes seemed to get a huge kick out of finding pictures in “grown up” magazines, and connecting them with letters. There were cries of: “Look, Mommy! There’s a car! That starts with C!”
The kids often got tired of cutting things out, so the parents would handle that job, letting the kids paste the cut-outs into their books. Some kids even made up stories from their new picture books. Eight pages seemed like just enough for attention spans, too.
If you give this a try with your little ones, I’d love to hear how it went!
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