Summer School Bookmaking

I received a wonderful email from Liz Hopman who is using some of the projects from Handmade Books For A Healthy Planet and my website with her summer school class of kids from 2nd-4th grades. She reports that the kids are enthusiastic and I love the projects she has designed. Her writing ideas came from writingfix.com.

The class made the simple rubber band binding for the first hectic day with the book _All the Places to Love_. The kids made a list of their favorite places in their books. They did the Yakety Yak books the next day using the mentor text _I Am The Dog, I Am The Cat_. The kids decided they should be called the versus (vs.) books because their subjects were "against" each other. There were some pretty creative pairs: gumball vs. Pop-Tart, Mom vs. Dad, alligator vs. lion and Sponge Bob vs. Patrick.

Some other lessons she has planned are: _Silver Seeds_, (a book of acrostic poems), accordion time line book for kids to write their own acrostic poems; _Diary of a Worm_, (a journal book), stick and elastic for kids to make their own journal; and _The End_, (a backwards story), kids will make a palm leaf book with their own backwards story.