Bookmaking for a Preschool Family Theme

Welcome back to the #playfulpreschool fun! Last week, we all shared lessons for an apple theme. This week we’re focusing on a preschool family theme, so I thought I’d share a family bookmaking lesson.

If you’re a regular reader of Fun-A-Day, it’s no surprise that I love making books with my students. It’s an incredibly meaningful way to teach a variety of concepts to young children:

• We read and write left to right, and top to bottom.
• What we can say, we can write. What we can write, we can read.
• The concept of a word – a word goes from space to space.
• Punctuation – a period tells us to stop at the end of a sentence.
• The pictures/illustrations match the words.
• High frequency words.
• Letter-sound correspondence.

My school year just started, so I’m focusing on creating a preschool community in my classroom – a preschool “family”. Creating a book about the people in our class is just one part of this process. This lesson can easily be adapted for use at home, too. Simply focus on the different members of your family, rather than students in a class! Let’s get started:

Decide who will be featured in the family book.
Since this book was meant for our preschool “family”, we chose to include everyone in the class. So all of the students have a page, and each teacher does, too!

Gather photos of the family members or students for the book.
On the first day of school, I took photos of each of the children. I use their pictures in tons of activities, so I like to have that first day picture. For this book, I just printed out pictures of the kids using my home printer. You can also get real photos printed at a local store.

Write a simple sentence to go along with each person’s photo.
I think including full sentences, rather than just one word, when making books is important. It helps with language development, word recognition, etc. For our book, I chose to use “I see (insert name).” A variety of other simple sentences would work, too – “Here is (name).” “This is (name).” “(Name) is in my family.” I wrote the sentences on strips of blank white paper, saying the words as I wrote them.

Have the child add the words to a piece of paper.
I cut the sentence apart by word, saying each word as I did so. After that, I encouraged the child to reassemble the sentence. I helped out as needed, of course! Then each kiddo glued the words on his own page.

Glue the appropriate pictures onto the page.
A great time to sneak in a comment about how the pictures match the words in books. I usually do this by grabbing the wrong picture and placing it on the child’s page. I usually get a giggle in response, along with, “No! That’s not me!”

Go back and reread the sentence.
Easy peasy. Point to each word, encouraging the child to read along with you!

Repeat for each family member or student.
Keep creating pages for the family book until it’s done!

Put the papers together into a book!
I laminated the pages of my class family book, then used my binding machine to put it all together.

Read! Read! Read!
We’ll read our book together multiple times, then it will go into our reading center. I find books we’ve made together are read over and over and over again throughout the year. 🙂

Have you ever created a book with your children or your students? What did they enjoy the most about the experience?

I keep my preschool family theme ideas in my All About Me Pinterest board. Pop on over for some more ideas!

Follow Mary Catherine @ Fun-A-Day!’s board {Theme} ALL ABOUT ME on Pinterest.

Below are other activities and ideas for a preschool family theme from the rest of the #playfulpreschool team!

Plan your Family Theme Preschool Activities with these ideas from the Playful Preschool Education Team!

Family Theme Learning Activities: Reading – Writing – Cooking – Sensory – Art – Math


Bookmaking for a Preschool Family Theme from Fun A Day
Finding My Family on a Map from Powerful Mothering
Preschool Writing Activity: Letters to Family from Mom Inspired Life
Cooking with Kids: Family Recipe Books from Growing Book By Book
Our Family Tree: Sorting Family Members from Still Playing School
Family Themed Sensory Bin from Little Bins for Little Hands
Tips for Using Skype to Connect with Family from The Educators’ Spin On It
Family Portraits from Rainy Day Mum
Family Counting from Tiny Tots Adventures
Jamaican Games for Fine and Gross Motor Skills from Learning 2 Walk
Family Footprints from Capri +3