Class Made Books

One of my personal goals this year was to create more class-made books! We have 16 students so I am shooting for 16 books so each child can keep one!

So why class made books? Especially for 4 year olds who can not "read"??? Well, a few reasons actually:
1. teaching author and illustrator--they get to activity be both!
2. teaching parts of a book (front cover, spine, pages, back cover)
3. teaching students how to care for and properly use our books---they tend to be extra careful with things they helped create!
4. familiar texts/topics---they may not be able to "read" yet but they can retell and they can start making connections to their friends picture and their names!
5. encourages creativity and individuality
6. encourages students to write--at any stage!

Here are a few we have created!

Our first book was "A Colorful Class Book". Each child had a pre-made page with their name and their letter ( I added the pictures later). I gave each child a sheet of stickers and had them add stickers in their letter....this is a great fine motor skill activity!

I love including environmental print into the classroom. Most children can easily identify McDonald's and Walmart well before they can formally read but identifying these forms of print are a first step in that process. Each week when we introduce a new letter, I try to have a few examples of environmental print. Last year I had our students bring in environmental print and we put it on a wall. This year I decided to make it a working class book, one that the children could touch and explore.

Colors Book:

During our "All About Me" unit, we asked the kids different questions like "what is your favorite movie?" and "What is your favorite color?". We decided to use the latter question to review our colors and to make....you guessed it...another class book.

5 Senses :  I wish I had been blogging when we did our 5 senses unit! There are so many great (and yummy) ideas out there about teaching the senses. We decided on popcorn! You can see it as kernels and as it pops, you can smell it cooking, you can hear it popping, you can touch it when you eat it, and the best...EAT it ! After exploring our senses, we made a book about it. We divided up the 5 senses between our 17 students. We asked each child what is something you can ____ (taste, touch, see, smell, hear)...to help them we asked them about something they did today at school. I love each child's response. Some responses were feeling the soap, or hearing a plane outside!

 Community Helpers: For this unit we had a "At Home" project. Each child was sent home a blank person printed on card stock. They were asked to decorate it as what they wanted to be when they grew up. When they brought them back to school a week later, the students got to share their project with the class. We then turned them into a class book!

Harold and the Purple Crayon: We got to enjoy this story on the computer while at specials. The kids really enjoyed it and it led to many different conversations about using our imagination. I wanted to follow my students' lead in this so we again made a class book. The kids really loved see what their classmates came up with.

Tom the Turkey: Holidays bring busy schedules but also fun traditions. When I taught first grade we did an At Home project for Tom the Turkey and it was so much fun that I keep doing it every year!

Each child is given a blank turkey template printed on heavy card stock. Their job is to create a disguise for Tom the Turkey--he doesn't want to be on the table for Thanksgiving! 

I kept their projects to put in their yearly portfolios but took a photo of each child holding their turkey to add to the book. Each page said the same thing and the students' wrote their name in the first blank. We helped fill in what they were disguised as :D