dana's test blog

Lucy loves to write stories.   She's always making a new book, stapling pages together, drawing pictures.  It's really fun to watch.   One day I showed her a trick for making a book and sewed some papers together with a cardstock cover.  She thought it was the coolest thing and suddenly felt like a real author with her "fancy" book. 

So with summer here, I sewed more fancy books to help her document our summer happenings.  

They're simple summer journals with a page for each day, a few lines to write what she did that day, and space at the bottom to draw a picture. 

 

And at the end I included a summer calendar since Lucy's always asking me what day it and when we're going to Grandma's house in California and when her friends' birthdays are, etc.  Now she can keep track of it by coloring in a square each day.

And how fun will it be to look back at all the fun we had over the summer?  At least I hoped she'd see it that way.....I didn't want to force it on her.  But she totally dug it and got busy with her first entry.

These are pretty self-explanatory:
• cardstock
• photocopied papers
• then sew it down the middle.

But here are few tips and my templates if you care to use them.

• my original thought was to make one journal for the entire summer.  But I realized that would be a lot of pages to sew through.  So instead, I made multiple journals so she can use one for each month.  Plus, we have extras to giveaway to friends.  Of course if the project fizzles, she can just keep one journal for the three months.
• Decide what you want for your journal, draw your pages, or download my 3 page template HERE (you should be prompted to open the pdf file in Acrobat or other software on your computer).
Please note: I was having problems with the formatting so the letter "T" in "Today" is missing on two pages.  You'll have to handwrite that one in!

• Print the pages and then photocopy them so they're double-sided.  Copy the "Today" page on the back of the title/end page.  Then photocopy a bunch of double sided "Today" pages.  You need 8 double-sided Today pages per book (to fill one month).
• To make it extra fun I copied "Summer Stories" to the front cover and copied the calendar on the back cover (took some tinkering to figure out which direction to load the cardstock in the copy machine.  But after a few tries it worked out).
• When you're ready to sew,  fold the front cover in half, then unfold it, and place the pages on top with a binder clip at the bottom to hold them together.  Then sew right on top of the folded line, down the middle of the paper.  Remove the binder clip as you get to the bottom.

Fold the finished books in half and you have beautifully sewn books.  I still smile when I make one. They really do look fancy!

If your child is too young to write, you might write their words for them and they can draw the pictures.  Or simply create a picture journal with blank pieces of paper. Even easier.

Now let the fun begin.  

 Day ONE:

There's gonna be lots to write about this summer, I predict.