Guest Post: Child Made Books

Donna from Mom of 4 is with us again today!

Recently, (one of ) my 4 year old(s) brought home Knuffle Bunny from the library. It's the story of what happens when Trixie's stuffed bunny accidentally gets put in the washing machine and is left behind at the laundromat. After reading it to them a few hundred times, they were inspired to make their own Knuffle Bunny books.

This isn't a new activity. I remember making books when I was younger, but I would never have thought of it if they wouldn't have first. The directions are simple.  Staple a few pieces of paper together and give them some markers or crayons and then be on hand to help them write whatever they want to write. The important part is letting them take the lead. This is full of all kinds of pre literacy lessons that you can read about here, but if you ask me, the most important one is that they enjoy reading/being read to/writing (hence letting them take the lead.) Cole's was several pages, and he was mostly the illustrator. He asked me to copy passages out of the book for him. (My anal self really wanted to not leave the important parts out, but I reminded myself that this was his project.) He added the creative twist of having a "big dinosaur" and a "little dinosaur" in the story which you can see illustrated here (the big teeth and the little teeth):

Ellie wanted hers short and she retold the story to me as I wrote it down (so if you wanted more of a summary, here you go...if you can read my writing, except her version also has a dragon in it.)

Ellie is also interested in the "About the Author" part that is usually at the end of the book so she had me write this. (This is really from another book she made, but I had to share it because it's too cute!)