My Latest over at Crafting a Green World: Bookbinding and Bubble Recipes

a round-up of homemade bubble solution recipes

and a look at the Zutter Bind-it-All, which the girls and I use to make homemade books

our most recent creations

Syd made this "coloring book" using my stash scrapbook paper.

 I'm sure that one day I'll use the binding tool to craft beautiful handmade books for myself, but so far in its life, I've mostly used it to bind the children's creations. I have to say, though, that it's been massively useful in this respect--the kids adore making books, and it's turned out be a great culminating project for many of their studies. For instance, over the course of a few weeks the girls made a Civil War book--the pages are just coloring pages from The Story of the Civil War, printed at one-quarter size, colored, and trimmed, but over that same period we've been seriously studying the history of the Civil War, so the book is an accurate representation of their knowledge now, and they both enjoy reading through it:

Syd's cover illustration is a weeping, blood-red sun.

This officer's uniform has such depth because Syd colored it yellow before Will reminded her that Union soldiers wear blue. Oops!

The sun sees, and is dismayed.

I like the extra battle effects, because the ones already drawn in are clearly insufficient.

As part of Willow's exploration of multiplication, I found her sets of circles divided up into different numbers of points around the circle, and Willow skip counted around each circle by a different number, connecting the dots as she went, and saw what she could see as far as shapes that were made and the patterns therein. The result bound up quite nicely as a little book: 

a circle divided into six points--it sometimes took her a couple of tries to get the counting right, but the pattern of shapes made is always intriguing

a circle divided into eight points

a circle divided into ten points

a circle divided into twelve points--she's got a better grasp on the process now!

 I've been struggling with how to present and store the girls' work lately, and I'm just loving these books for that, as well. Finished, they go on the girls' bookshelves in their room, where they can be taken out and looked at as often as the girls like. In that way, the girls can review information stress-free, at their leisure, as their minds compel them, and they can look at them with fresh eyes as they learn more context to go with each one.

I think this is the method that I'll use to make each girl's grade-level portfolio this year.

Here's what we used to make our books: