A Handmade First Words Book for Your Toddler

We are presenting Sara Hicks’ lovely idea. on how one can make a book with words and pictures for his/her child.

“Last week we bought my son a ‘first words’ book. It had some common words like ‘car’ and ‘ball’- but the car didn’t look like ours and the neon orange soccer ball didn’t look like any we owned. So I thought it might be nice to create a first words book exclusively for him, using objects that were more familiar to him and focusing on words that he was either already trying to grasp (ball, momma) or words that would be helpful to me (milk, water).

I started with some letters I had long ago purchased at a thrift store for a dollar. I was thrilled to come up with a project for them, since they have been sitting unused in a glass jar for at least a year. I photographed the words on a white background, and then photographed the objects on a white background as well. I did most of this during Gram’s naps. Then I compiled the album in iphoto (I have a Mac)…

Clothes

Food

If this one is a success with my little G, I’m thinking I will do a book exclusively of people in his life (his grandparents, uncles, doctor, etcetera), with the hope they will be more familiar to him- particularly the long-distance relatives.

Toys

Sara Hicks (the author of the blog “Party Perfect”)”

When the book is made you can send it to Blurb or Lulu  (or to some other companies) for them to be published professionally and then shipped back to you.

Several more ideas on how to compile a book for the child from ?? Del4yo:

“Every year since my baby is born I make him a book. A real one for him only, published professionally … This year, I wanted to celebrate my baby’s new vocabulary and speaking skills. We made a list of all the objects our baby was able to name, and gathered them. We took a picture of each object on a white background.

Then I Photoshoped them to make a clean picture of each on perfect white… I put patiently one picture after another in the book, adding as a comment the name my baby gave to each object, plus the adult name, for educational purpose (haha).

You can make the same project with an older child, gathering his favourite toys…Or do it for yourself with every day objects. It will be a nice memory book in ten years or so.

Del4yo (the author of the blog “Non diary Diary”)”

And here is an idea on how to make a book in a very simple way from Stacie:

“I took regular color photos of things that mattered to him (keys, banana, phone, car) and then typed the word in a very clear readable font and put it all together in one of those freebie 4×6 little plastic photoalbums from WalMart. It was a favorite and he carried it around for a long while and learned the words!”

And have you ever made anything like this for your little one?

Illustrations to he article

The photos are taken and editted by the authors of the ideas

To read this article in Russian, please, visit here.

Next time we will tell you how to edit a photo in Photoshop to insert it into a book (or to use it for other purposes)