Making Books with Your Child

Any child who has been read to regularly is going to love books so much that soon they will want to make a book of their own. This is a good impulse to encourage in your child. Writing aptitudes are as important as reading aptitudes as your child gains his or her education and seeks employment as an adult.
Making a book can be as simple as folding a couple of sheets in half together then stapling them along the imaginary spine of your book. Another fun thing to do is to punch holes along one edge of your pages and string yarn through the holes. A child's best efforts can be taken to a print shop and laminated and bound with a cheap comb binding. Another thing you can do to preserve a book a child wants to keep a long time is to insert the pages into sheet protectors then bind the sheets with a stiff paper or cardboard cover. That is the mechanics of book binding.
The real fun is in putting your child's words and drawings down on paper. Older children can do all of that themselves, if they so desire. A child is who is not yet reading and writing on their own will need you to be their hands. You could use a tape recorder and let your child rattle off their story as fast as they normally would talk, then transcribe it when they are done. My daughter actually loved to watch me hanging on her every word as she dictated and I wrote. After you have all the words down, you can decide how to divide them up into pages and what kind of pictures to add to each page. The illustrations can be all your child's efforts or you could help as much as you child wishes you to. Another approach would be to tell the story in pictures first, then add the words later. No one way is right or wrong.
What can a book be about? Children are great at making up their own stories. Stories can run the gamut from the totally silly like Dr. Seuss to something like their own made-up fairy tale. They can do true stories about something that happened to them. They can make a book about their vacation. They can do a book about themselves and have a page for each favorite thing they love. Their family can be a great topic, including the grandparents and cousins. They can make their own alphabet book or counting book. They can make a nonfiction book about how caterpillars change into butterflies or how the trees change with the seasons. Picking a topic is not usually very hard. A child will usually have an idea what they want to do before they start.
All children have something to say and love for others to listen to them. A child who believes they can use writing to communicate and express their feelings has an advantage throughout their entire life. Your child will love it if you help him or her to create their first books. After you have finished a book together, add it to their stack of bedtime stories. Your child will love it when you read their own book back to them.