Last week I had a genius idea: have Honeybun make a book! I know, not that ingenious but one of the 1st grade Common Core standards for Language Arts entails “use a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing” which we hadn’t covered yet so I figured it was time (I’m following the Common Core standards for our homeschool curriculum, read more here).
We sat down to begin and I suggested we do something about Thanksgiving. At first she wasn’t to keen on the idea but then I put out the clincher, “We could go to the library and get books about it…” Got her: hook, line and sinker! So we went to the library and got a few Thanksgiving books (and then went to the ER, but that’s a different story!)
We read the books together and then I asked Honeybun what she’d like to name her book. She immediately decided to call it “Pilgrim History” and began telling me the story of the pilgrims and the Mayflower. It took us a few days to get the story written (and many revisits to the borrowed books!) and a few arguments to get the pictures drawn, but the end result is, I think, Amazing!
And here it is, her e-book of the history of the pilgrims in the (exact) words and pictorial representations of my first grader (click to read!):
And of course, Sugarplum had to get in on it too. So here’s her story, Silly, Turkey, Silly!
Making an ebook with kids is fun and easy. I had them type (I did the typing for Sugarplum) what they wanted to say in a Power Point presentation. Honeybun learned how to use spell-check and they picked their own fonts. I then took digital pictures of their drawings inserted each on the page and the girls helped me correct the color, crop, size and position the pictures. When everything was just how we wanted it, I simply saved it as a PDF file. Ebook, done! Taking their words and pictures and creating their very own e-story. was exciting for them and they love reading their words and seeing their pictures on the computer!
