Making books is a great way to introduce, practice or solidify the literacy concept. Making books is appropriate for students of all ages, but I’ll focus here on non-readers.  This is perfect for one-on-one work or for parents to do at home.

The concept can be described in three steps:
1 - What I think, I can say.
2 - What I say can be written.
3- What is written can be read.

I’ll use an example of a book I made with my two-year old to describe the process. The first step is to recognize when something book-worthy is happening.  Carson and I were cutting open a pumpkin in order to fill it with applesauce and bake it when I realized this would make a good book. So, I talked a lot about what we were doing. “I’m cutting the pumpkin with a knife”, “Let’s scrape the seeds out with spoon” and “Good job - you scraped the seeds out with a spoon”. It’s also nice if you can take a picture. Remembering details is sometimes tricky with a toddler, so the photo helps jog the memory.

Later that day, I helped Carson tell his dad about the pumpkin. I showed him the picture and he was able to remember some of the details. I thought it was a good time to make a book. The trick here is to work quickly. We grabbed a piece of construction paper and 3 sheets of copy paper, folded them in half and stapled them.

The title of the book always has his name in it. In this case, “Carson and Mommy Cooked a Pumpkin”. We’re working on that first step in the concept of literacy, (What I think, I can say). I try to get a coherent sentence from Carson. “What did we do with the pumpkin? How did we open it?” As we are working through the sentence, I am drawing a picture. When I say picture, I mean stick-figures and barely recognizable objects. As soon as we get something that makes sense, we move on to the second step (What I say can be written). “OK, I’m writing your sentence: Mommy cut the pumpkin with a knife”. You’ll have to work as fast as the attention span of the kiddo. For me, that’s about 10 seconds per page and 4 total pages. When the book is done, you read it together (step 3 - what is written can be read).  

We read the “Carson books” all the time. I encourage him to “read” it and he loves it.

A couple of tips about making books:
  - non-fiction and narrative (real life stories are the best practice)
  - choose small topics (”my summer vacation” is way to big to be interesting)
  - work quickly (keep their attention)
  - re-read often (point to the words while you read)

If you are not artistically inclined and worried about your illustrations (I have a hard time differentiating my stick figures), try this:
www.moo.com
You can upload pictures and have them printed on stickers. That way, you can give your stick figures a real face.