Make Your Own Booklet Project

Hand-sewn Booklet: Make Your Own

It's no secret that we're book lovers and storytellers over here. We've been studying the 7 continents in our homeschool co-op and, as one of the teachers, I've gleefully brought our family's passions to class, introducing the kids to folk tales from each region. Later, I'll post a mega list of all the picture books we've used.

Oceania/Australia presented a unique challenge. For Africa, we chose a particularly hilarious Anansi story and performed a puppet show for my son's presentation at co-op. But for Australia, we struggled to get a hold of picture book at all. 

So, we made our own!

I wanted to do a true booklet so my 3rd grader could hand sew it, which he enjoys, and because booklets like this are more durable and feel more like a "real" book than simpler projects. We already had a manual craft drill, a darning needle (they are blunt), and strong thread.

What we do NOT have is a wonderful but expensive program like InDesign to order the pages for easy printing. When you make a booklet, you lay the sheets on top of each other and sew through the middle, so each page becomes two half-sized pages--the numbering can get complicated. I've made pdfs and docs with blank, numbered pages ready to print using standard programs like Word and Open Office. Get them along with instructions and other booklet project ideas on my teacher pay teacher site to Make Your Own Booklet.

You could staple it if you don't want to sew it, but for us, the sewing is half the fun.

For Australian mythology, we used the story of Crow Steals Fire, broke it down into plot points, and rewrote it in my son's words using his illustrations. He enjoyed retelling the story and sewing the book, so we'll be doing more booklet projects in the future!

Have fun!