If a kid enjoys reading, then I feel like they are pretty much guaranteed to get a better education than a child who attends school for 6 to 7 hours a day and does NOT enjoy reading. Kids forget 95% of the facts they learn anyway. (I just made that statistic up, but it feels right, doesn’t it?) But stories? Those last. Someone who reads confidently and comfortably can learn anything. As a bonus, reading about characters and storylines that authors have taken the time to carefully construct get lessons on life and character and morality. It is a rare day when I stop one of my children from reading a book for pleasure. Though, to be fair, this also true of when they are drawing, building, playing fantasy games, etc. Some parents never wake a sleeping baby. I never interrupt a happily playing child that is using their imagination.

Now, my first two children became readers fairly naturally. This may have a lot to do with the fact that I had a lot more time to practice with them when they were young. See this adorable reading log train I used with them. My third child was diagnosed with dyslexia in third grade. Getting him to be comfortable reading took a lot more work, but now he is going into 6th grade and reads ALL the time. He was literally bugging me just a few minutes about when the libray books I requested for him are coming in. (Answer, sometime between Tuesday and December. You never can tell.) My fourth child though…oh my poor fourth child. I went back to college to become a teacher when he was 6. I finished my degree, got my teachers license and am not working full time. The end result? He is going into fourth grade and was still reading at about a first grade level in January.

This needed to be fixed. In my opinion, the best way to teach a kid to read is to facilitate practice. I started by going back to basics. I learned from my dyslexic child the importance of decodable texts for building reading skills so I went back and redid my kindergarten and first grade suggestions on my Book Series for Kids page. Then I told him the plan. We were goign to make a reading chain, because who has time for a train in this busy world, and I was going to sit with him every day so we could read books (easy books) to add to his chain. His reward was that once he chain was as long as our hallway, he would get to pick a flavor of ice cream that we would have for dessert.

We used many of the books on the Kindergarten and First Grade series pages, though I’m realizing now that I forgot to add the ones in the picture above. Those are from Julia Donaldson’s Songbirds series (affiliate link) which is a bit expensive, but quite lovely. I will be saving them for any future potential grandkids.

What I was even more pleased by though was that when we finished our chain, my then third grade son did not want to stop. He kept going on his own. He made little rocketships and would add them as he read his easy readers by himself. At first, he was not adding the titles, but when I told him he should, he started doing it.

Even my 5th grade dyslexic child didn’t want to miss out on the action. He made his own reading chain too. At this point, he is obsessed with the Wings of Fire books and read one every 3 days or so, but for his reading challenge, he went back and read some books that were easy for him like Dragon Masters. It does not matter to me what they read, as long as they are reading.

Overall, I am very pleased with how this went. We are using different strategy over the summer, to ensure my youngest makes the most progress possible in this downtime. I’m hoping to share this with results at the end of summer. However, the reading chains were a very successful strategy during the busy school year time. It took some diligence when I was the one reading with him every day and helping him make his chain, but it was worth it. I did not even expect him to take over and keep doing it on his own. That was just a bonus. I would say he progressed about a full grade level during the 5 months of so that he was doing it, which still leaves him about a grade level behind his age and about a grade level from the really fun books.

All kids develop at their own pace, so I never want my kids to feel pressured. However, if we can use this summer to turn him into someone who really enjoys reading, I am all for it!

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary
Time Required: ~10 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Practically free

Materials:

• paper (preferably colored construction paper for visual appeal)
• scissors or paper cutter
• tape

Instructions:

1. Cut the paper into strips.
2. Acquire some easy books. Check your local library or my book series suggestions.
3. Everytime the child reads a book, either alone or with your help, write the title and add it to the chain!

That’s it! Happy reading!

Click here for more Starting to Read activities for kids.

Related Links

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While I definitely have opinions about politics, I have done my best to make this lap book as neutral and nonpartisan as possible. I believe that the best future is one in which all sides can communicate openly and respectfully with one another and try to understand each other’s point of view.

That being said, while I tried to create this lap book as accurately as possible, there may be finer points of certain political parties which I am not as familiar with. If you believe I got anything wrong regarding any of the four candidates positions on certain issues, please let me know. I am always learning.

For those that have older kids vs. younger kids, there are two versions of this lapbook. One version I call the “minimal writing” version. It is the one I use with my own kids. Anything that could be pre-filled out, I typed in already. There is still some writing, like the page that asks who the child would vote for. However, it is not as overwhelming for new writers.

The other version leaves a lot more blank, so older kids can research the answers. They will need to look up the duties of the president and vice president and the dates of the debates, election, and inauguration. They will need to find the number of electoral voters per state. The biggest undertaking is the chart in which kids will need to decide which issues are important to them and then research the different candidates’ positions on those issues.

Of course, there is always the option to mix and match. Some kids might benefit from looking up some answers, while having others already filled in for them. Both versions of the lap book have a map for the child to color as the results come in. There is also a final tally page where they can keep track of the number of electoral votes awarded for each candidate. This way they can watch real time who is winning the race to 270 electoral votes and the presidency.

If you are using this lap book with elementary-aged kids or younger, there are two picture books that I recommend trying to get from your library. Back when I made our first election lap book 8 years ago, our family really enjoyed Grace For President by Kelly DiPucchio. Not only is it a charming story, it does a fantastic job of introducing kids to concepts such as the electoral college and swing states.

We also read Duck for President by Doreen Cronin. This book targets a slightly younger audience. All my kids liked it, including my preschooler, though my older kids did not learn anything new. It is great for explaining what an election is and illustrating the difference between local vs. national politics.

Recommended Age Range: Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: ~30 minutes to assemble
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable

Materials

• Paper for printing 2024 U.S. Presidential Election Lap Book. (Note that if you are doing the “minimal writing” version of the lap book, you will want to print pages 1-13. If you are doing the blank version, you will want pages 1-7 and 14-19.)
• manila file folder (personally, I like the straight cut version for lap books, but any will work equally well.)
• 4 pieces of cardstock

Supplies & Tools

• Scissors
• Tape
• Pencil
• Glue
• Stapler

Instructions

1. First, print out the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election Lap Book. If you would like to create the “minimal writing” version of the lap book, you will want to print pages 1-13. If you would rather create the blank version, print pages 1-7 and 14-19.
2. Cut out all the pieces.
   
3. Make your election vocabulary booklets and staple them together. You have some options. My personal preference is to put the picture on top, then the definition (which I call the clue), and then the vocabulary word on the bottom. That way kids can test themselves to see if they can figure out what the word is using the picture and definition. Another option would be to put the word on top, then the picture and definition underneath.
   
4. Fold the shorter side of your manila file folder inward to meet the middle, as shown.
   
5. Fold the longer side of the manila file folder in to meet the middle as well. I chose to overlap them slightly, but that is up to you.
   
6. Tape a piece of cardstock to the top of the lap book. Remember to tape it from behind when it is folded down so it can open and close easily.
   
7. Tape a sheet of cardstock to the bottom of lapbook. Again, remember to tape it when it is folded inside the lap book.
   
8. Tape a second piece of cardstock to the right of the piece of cardstock at the top of the lap book.
   
9. Cut your last piece of cardstock in half. I used a paper cutter, but you could also just fold it in half and use scissors.
   
10. Tape one of the half sheets of cardstock onto the left of the sheet of cardstock on top.
    
    When you are finished attaching the cardstock, it should look like this:
    
11. Place the cover page on top of the file folder and center it.
    
12. Without moving the page, bring forward whichever side of the file folder will be on top. I chose to bring the shorter side forward, but it doesn’t really matter. Use a pencil to mark the edge of the side. This is where you will cut.
    
13. Cut along the pencil marking.|
    
14. Glue the cover pieces onto the front of the lapbook.
    
15. When you open the election lap book, glue the President and Vice President duties on either side. Remember that there are two versions of these sheets – one filled in and one blank. Choose the one that is more appropriate for your child.
    
16. Glue the Political Parties label and cards onto the piece of cardstock on top, when it is folded down, as shown.
    
17. When you lift up the political parties, glue the presidential candidates on the bottom sheet of cardstock which is still folded up. Be sure to match the candidates to the political parties that were on the top sheet.
    
    
18. On the half sheet of cardstock directly above the presidential candidates, before it is opened up, glue in the important dates. Note that there are two versions of this page with the dates blank and filled in.
    
19. On the full piece of cardstock directly above the presidential candidates, before it is opened up, glue in the election vocabulary.
    
20. In the area after you unfold the top pieces of card stock, glue the important issues onto the 2 and half page spread. You can choose to either use the pre-filled-in issues pages or the blank version.
    
21. When you fold down the presidential candidates, glue the electoral map onto the middle section of the manila file folder and the final tally onto the very bottom piece of cardstock. Note that there are two versions of these pages as well.
    

Your 2024 United States presidential election lap book is now ready to use. Have fun taking advantage of this once-in-four-years learning opportunity!

Click here for more Government and Civics activities and printables for kids.

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This 2024 set of presidential election cards features the following 20 vocabulary words and 4 candidates:

• election
• president
• vice president
• campaign
• electoral college
• debate
• popular vote
• incumbent
• caucus
• ballot
• democracy
• inauguration
• executive branch
• swing state
• veto
• political party
• Republican Party
• Democratic Party
• Libertarian Party
• Green Party
• Donald Trump
• Kamala Harris
• Chase Oliver
• Jill Stein

These cards are actually inspired by Montessori education, meaning that in addition to the control cards shown above, they also come as split cards used for matching. Younger kids can match just the pictures to the names or words. Slightly older kids can match the pictures to the name or key word plus description. The oldest kids can math the name or key word to the description or try to match all 3 parts. Once kids have done the matching, they can use the control cards to see if they are right, making the activity self-correcting if you want it to be.

Another thing I love about Montessori-inspired multi-part cards is that they can be used for a number of games. The cards which contain on the information can be used as clue cards. You can use any board game (like Candyland or Chutes & Ladders) and some dice to race to the finish by just drawing a clue card for each turn and only rolling if you can correctly name the word associated with the clue card. If you don’t have a game board, you are welcome to print out my free generic game board.

Another way to play games with these cards is to do a memory style matching game. Simply choose two types of cards like picture and full information or word and clue. Then lay them out in a grid and take turns trying to make matches. I recommend not starting out with the full set of 24 cards. Start with a smaller subset and then work your way up.

Personally, I recommend laminating the cards for durability, but if you only plan to use them for a couple days, you could leave them as just paper. Printing on cardstock is also an option.

Recommended Age Range: Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: ~30 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable, less than $3 to laminate

Materials:

• Paper for printing U.S. Presidential Election Cards and corresponding control cards. (Note that the last page of each document does not need to be printed as it just contains legal information regarding image sources.)
• Paper for printing bonus Presidential Candidates 2024 cards (again, no need to print the last page)
• 18 thermal laminating pouches

Supplies & Tools:

• Laminator
• Paper trimmer or scissors

Instructions:

1. Print the U.S. Presidential Election Cards, the corresponding control cards, and the 2024 Presidential Candidates bonus cards
2. Laminate them using thermal laminating pouches (instead, you could also print on card stock, use contact paper to laminate, or not laminate them at all).
   
3. Cut them out.
   

See my Montessori-inpired cards page for further details on how to use these cards.

Enjoy turning this upcoming 2024 presidential election into a hands-on learning experience for your children!

Click here for more Government and Civics activities and printables for kids.

Related Links

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Honestly, the main reason I started making these sheets was that I got an iPad and was playing around with Procreate. I was trying to see all the capabilities of this remarkable and fun program when I realized that I could gradually fade out lines. Since reminding my young boys to start their letters from the top is a daily annoyance, this gave me the idea to write all the letters in Procreate and shade them so they could remember which direction the letters should be written.

By having the child start at the darkest part of the letter and move towards the lighter part of the line, the child intuitively knows which way to write the letter. They don’t need me constantly reminding them. After a trial run, I decided to add dots to indicate where the child should place the pencil. This is particularly helpful for letters that require you to pick up your pencil and place it a second time. I also decided to alternate as the child moved down the page between the letters that showed the path and tracing letters that were solid color so the child could gradually practice remembering more and more which way to go.

At the bottom of the page are some blank spaces so the child can practice writing the letters without tracing at all. My kids have not graduated to that level yet, LOL. Another nice thing about these free printing pages is that you (and I) can print them again as needed. I actually bound a copy of the whole book for my kids using my binding machine. However, if a particular letter is giving my kid trouble, I might print that page again and wordlessly hand it to them to let them know they need some review.

Hopefully, these sheets are as helpful to you as they have been to me and my kiddos! I actually have number and uppercase printing pages ready as well that I’m planning to post soon. I haven’t made the pages yet, but I’ve also made Procreate cursive letters as well that I was planning to put together for my kids as they get older. Sign up for my newsletter to get notified when they are available!

Recommended Age Range: Kindergarten, Early Elementary
Time Required: 1 minute
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable

Materials:
paper

Instructions:
1. Print out the Lowercase Printing Pages as many times as you want!

2. Optionally, you may want to bind the pages using a binding machine, combs, and covers.

ENJOY!

Related Links

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The post Lowercase Printing Sheets appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

The reason why I wanted to include Pluto was that I also wanted to read my co-op class this hilarious book told from the point of view of the demoted planet. (My full review of Pluto Gets the Call is here.) As I read the book in class, I passed around the laminated planets for the kids to compare. This let them experience firsthand how much smaller Pluto is than all the others.

Even more impressive than the relative size of the planets to each other is their relative size compared to the Sun. My younger kids and I spent about 30 minutes measuring and painting a Sun a few days before class. In the co-op, I had the students guess how big they thought the Sun would be with their arms before I unveiled our creation for dramatic effect. When I originally did this Sun activity, I just accepted the fact that the whole Sun was not going to fit on my butcher paper. This time around, I wanted to make a big impact, so I used two pieces of butcher paper side by side to fit the whole thing. The results were pretty impressive.

Laying the planets, especially Pluto, on top of the Sun shows how incredibly small all of the planets are compared to our favorite star. Pluto may be the only dwarf planet in the group, but all of the planets are dwarfed by this monstrosity.

Relative Size of Pluto Details

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: about an hour altogether to laminate all the planets and measure and paint the Sun
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable planets. Butcher paper and paint for the Sun require a couple dollars in used supplies. Might be a bigger investment if you don’t already have butcher paper and paint lying around.

Materials

• Free printable major planets
• Free printable Pluto
• Butcher paper
• Yellow paint (we also added a little red paint to add some fun variation)
• Laminating sheets

Supplies

• laminator
• scissors
• paintbrushes
• Optional: Pluto Gets the Call (this book complements the activity so well!)

Instructions

1. First, print out all of the major planets and Pluto.
2. Cut out the planets and labels, then laminate them and cut out the laminated pieces.
   
3. Follow the instructions on this post to make a Sun on the same scale. The radius should be 33″.
   

Have fun getting a sense of the scale of our solar system!

Related Links

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The post Relative Size of Pluto Activity appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

Among the facts my kids learned were that the Nile Delta is triangular and that it opens into the sea. Also, the lower (southern) part of Egypt is at a higher elevation than the upper (northern) region which causes the river to flow up on the map. By making models of the pyramids and the Sphynx, they will remember that those landmarks are in Egypt. After reading about Egypt, one of my kids even decided to make a trash can to “put the brains in” since ancient Egyptians believed that particular organ served no purpose.

I actually did this activity with my kids over a year ago and it didn’t go exactly as planned. I’ve debated whether or not to even include these pictures or redo them. Since a whole year has passed and we have now moved on to the Middle Ages, I figured I might as well add it since it is instructive despite my failed vision. I may redo it someday. My original vision was that we would plant seeds along the banks of the Nile River, then we would pour water along the Nile to represent the banks of the Nile overflowing. We did this, and it sort of worked. I used garden cress seeds.

The problem was that I used my homemade playdough to create the Nile which is full of salt. As it would turn out, the expression “salting the earth” comes from the practice of pouring salt over the earth of those you defeated to prevent their crops from growing. Salt is not conducive to growing plants. I did have several sprouts, but very quickly, they all died. In the future, I would not use salt-filled play dough for the nice river. Maybe I would try using clay either colored blue from the store or painted blue after the fact.

If you are looking for a good reference book to go along with this activity, our family enjoys Time Traveler by Usborne. Not only does it discuss Ancient Egypt, you can also learn about the Middle Ages in Europe, the Vikings, and the Ancient Romans. If you are looking for even more ideas to supplement this activity, here is my post, Best Resources for Studying Ancient Egypt. You can also find more ancient history activities and free printables on my page, Ancient History Activities for Kids.

Nile River Delta Activity Details

Recommended Age Range: Kindergarten, Elementary
Time Required: about 30 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: A few dollars for play dough or clay

Materials

• container such as a disposable 9×12″ casserole pan
• play dough or clay (I used homemade play dough, but if you would like to try growing seeds, I recommend clay. You may also want a couple different colors to show the river and the pyramids.)
• tray or cookie sheet to hold our model so it doesn’t get wobbly
• dirt
• paint (optional, if your clay is not the desired color)
• seeds such as garden cress (optional, if you would like to try growing a harvest along the Nile River)

Supplies

• shovel

Instructions

1. First, you will want to fill your pan with dirt.
   
2. Next get it wet to make it a little muddy.
   
3. Move the dirt around so that it is higher on one side than the other. This will show why the Nile River flows north to south. The water is traveling from higher elevation to lower elevation.
   
4. Use a picture of the Nile River to loosely sketch your river in the dirt. Make sure you include the Nile river delta in the lower elevation region! We used the Time Traveler book as a reference when we made our sketch.
   
5. Use your clay to mold the river and lay it down on top of your lines. If you were not using blue clay, feel free to paint it blue.
   
   
6. Next use the clay to scult some landmarks around the Nile River such as the Great Pyramids or the Sphinx.
   
   

Finally, just let your kids have fun! One of my kids decided to add some legs coming out of one of the pyramids as if it had fallen on a wicked witch.

If you are in the mood, try growing the plants along the Nile River to show how ancient farmers were able to use the flooding of the river to water their plants. Just remember, if you use play dough with salt, they will likely die quickly! One day when my younger kids are learning about ancient Egypt, I plan to try this again with clay.

Have fun learning about the Nile River!

Related Links

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Originally, I didn’t start off by making them into alphabet displays. When my oldest was maybe 6 months old and we were practicing signing, I hung a few animals around the house….a frog, a deer, a panda, a wolf. When he would get a little fussy, we would walk around the house looking at all our animal friends and making the signs. It worked so well that if an unfamiliar visitor came over and wanted to hold him, I could pass him off and say, “Go show him the wolf.” Usually, he would be distracted from wanting me because he was so excited to see the animals.

Around his second birthday, I decided I wanted to put up an animal for every letter of the alphabet. I trimmed the calendar pictures to fit inside page protectors and used index cards and markers to make an uppercase letter to go with each picture. The original animal posters were taken from a couple of animal calendars my mother-in-law had given us. Obviously, there weren’t animals for every single letter, so I had to get creative and print a few pictures from Google Images to fill in the gaps. Ibex, anyone?

Here are the animals we ended up using based on the calendars we had.

A – Antelope

B – Bison

C – Condor

D – Deer

E – Elk

F – Frog

G – Goat

H – Hedgehog

I – Ibex (printed)

J – Jellyfish (printed)

K – Kangaroo

L – Leopard

M – Moose

N – Narwhal (printed)

O – Octopus (printed)

P – Panda

U – Urchin (printed)

V – Viper (printed)

W – Wolf

X – X-ray Fish (printed)

Y – Yak

Z – Zebra

Over the years, once my oldest became good at the uppercase letters, I went back and added the lowercase letters. These wall letter posters then stayed up for at least 7 years straight for my next 2 kids. I took them down for about a year when I got tired of looking at them after my third child mastered his letters, but then I put them up again for my youngest who has just recently mastered all his letters. Now is it is time they came down for good! Here are some of the ways we have used them over the years.

How to Use Wall Letter Posters

Visit the Animals

When my youngest was a toddler, I would carry him as we would walk around the house visiting the animals, especially when he was in a bad mood. Once I added the letters to the pictures, we just talked about that too. “What animals is this? Yes, it’s a frog! Ribbit, ribbit. Do you know what letter frog starts with? It starts with an F. Can you touch the F?” Simple, easy, effective. I didn’t do this with my youngest since I had taken the letters down and he was the oldest to finally master his letters at 5 and a half. My oldest knew them all by 3. My middle two kids were somewhere in the middle.

Hide and Seek

One of the easiest ways to use the wall letters is to just have your child go find a letter. You can say, “Where is the F?” If they need help, you can use warmer/colder style clues to direct them to the right vicinity. Once they are close, you can help them narrow down which one is right by giving hints like, “F says ffff. Which animal starts with ffff? Is it the fffff-frog or the guh-guh-goat?”

Another way to play hide and seek with the letters is to write the letter they are trying to find on a post-it note. Then they can move around the house carefully comparing the shapes of the letters until they find a match.

Treasure Hunt

This activity involves a bit of prep work, but the kids think it is so fun. Write each letter of the alphabet on its own index card or scrap of paper. Rearrange the letters so you have a stack of letters out of order. (Note: You do not have to use the entire alphabet…you can just write down a list of a few that you would like to practice that day.) The letter on the top of the stack is the start of your treasure hunt. Leave that one on your counter or taped to your mirror or somewhere to hand to your child at the start of the game. This is your “starter” letter.

Next go to your starter letter and tape the next letter in your stack near it, but facing the wall so the child can’t read the letter without taking it off the wall. This is the second letter in your treasure hunt. Go to this second letter and tape the third letter until you get to the end of the stack. When you reach the bottom of the stack you will have directed your child to the final letter. At this final letter, tape an index card with a direction to the “treasure.” I typically just hide a little plastic dinosaur then at the end tell the child where they can find the dinosaur. The last letter will have a message that says something like, “Look in the piano bench.”

This involves some prepwork, but it is worth it, because the kids love playing this game and don’t even realize that they are practicing letter recognition.

Mixed Up Letters

Once your child knows their letters fairly well, it can be fun to mix up some of the letters and see if your child notices. Put the N on the Moose and the M on the Narwhal and tell your child that a crazy alphabet goblin broke into the house and messed up some of the letters. This is a little bit advanced and honestly, my 5 year old still probably couldn’t do this, but if your child has mastered their alphabet and is familiar with their sounds, they will enjoy finding the mistakes!

These homemade wall letter posters might not be the most attractive part of your home decor, but I think they make it clear to your child that these squiggly things we call letters are actually pretty important. If you decide to put up some letters in your home, I hope you and your child find these activities helpful and enjoyable!

Related Links

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After spending some time learning about Ancient Egypt, I thought it would be fun to make some DIY “papyrus” using brown paper bags. (I know those can be hard to find nowadays. I’m pretty sure this activity would work equally well with any type of paper including white printer paper.)

We started off by reading about Ancient Egypt. For those who are homeschooling, I have always used Story of the World as our history spine, but over the past couple of years, I have been using History Quest to supplement. Personally, I think SOTW is better for younger kids and the accompanying activity book includes pages that are quick and easy samples for our charter school. However, History Quest is meatier and I feel it is more appropriate for my 11-year-old. Even for those who are not homeschooling, we also used this $8 Hieroglyphs book to go along with this activity which included fun stencils. This book is primarily what we used to learn about cartouches and figure out what we wanted to write.

All of our resources included basically the same alphabet for the letters which you can also find for free online. The Hieroglyphs book we used by Joyce Milton includes a lot more information about how the hieroglyphs developed and what they mean for those interested in deeper knowledge. We also watched this 7 minute YouTube video showing the actual papyrus making process so my kids knew what we were symbolically imitating.

My kids had so much fun working on their own “papyrus” that I don’t think they will ever forget what it is, how it’s made, and hopefully, where it came from.

Possibly more fun even than creating the papyrus was writing on it after it dried. I encouraged kids to try out some of the hieroglyphs from the book, but, except for my oldest, mostly they just had fun drawing their own pictures.

Papyrus and Hieroglyph Activity Details

Recommended Age Range: Kindergarten, Elementary
Time Required: about 15 minutes to make papyrus, leave overnight to dry, 15 minutes for kids to write hieroglyphs
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Less than $2 in used supplies

Materials

• paper (we used brown paper bags)
• wax paper to keep from sticking
• paper towels (to dry excess glue)
• black paint
• white school glue
• chopsticks
• water
• container to hold paint (not shown, we used an old sour cream container)

Supplies

• shallow container to hold glue mixture (we used a 9×13 baking dish)
• measuring glass
• fork or spoon to stir

Instructions

1. To start, place a sheet of wax paper in front of the child on the counter. This will keep the papyrus from gluing itself to the work surface. You may want to tape it down with masking tape.
   
2. Next, measure a half cup of glue.
   
3. Add a cup of water to the glue a bit at a time and stir to keep the consistency smooth. When you are done, you should have 1.5 cups of water/glue mixture.
   
4. Pour the mixture into a shallow container for dipping the “papyrus” strips into.
   
5. Next cut your paper into strips. I used brown paper bags, but off the bottom of the bag, and made strips that were about 1 inch wide and 4 to 6 inches long.
   
   
6. Have the child dip the strip into the glue mixture so it is fully covered.
   
7. Next have them place the wet strip onto their wax paper.
   
8. Repeat the process laying the next strip so that it overlaps the first one.
   
9. Keep adding more strips covered in glue so that some of the strips are vertical and some are horizontal causing the strips to seem to weave together.
   
10. Leave the “papyrus” paper to dry overnight. Once the top is starting to dry, you may want to start to peel it away from the wax paper to speed up the drying process.
    
11. Next comes the fun part. Pour some black paint into a container. We used an old sour cream container. Then let the kids draw on their papyrus with a chopstick. You can encourage them to use the hieroglyph alphabet to write out their name, but for younger kids, don’t be surprised if they would prefer to invent their own hieroglyphs.
    
    If you would like to have your child create a cartouche, a symbol for a royal name, all they need to do is write their name vertically inside an oval using sounds from the hieroglyph alphabet to approximate their name. For example, for my name, Michelle, I used M-SH-L plus the hieroglyph indicating that I am female. I think cartouches also frequenty have a horizontal line underneath the oval, but I did not include this.
    
    

Have fun writing like an ancient Egyptian with this papyrus and hieroglyph activity!

Related Links

History Activities for Kids
Social Science Activities for Kids
Robotics Activities for Kids

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This ancient Mesopotamian Ziggurat activity was largely inspired by the ziggurat activity in the book, Ancient Egyptians and Their Neighbors: An Activity Guide. While we didn’t follow the procedure in this book exactly, the idea to stack boxes came from this book.

All we used to make this ziggurat were some material from packages we received the past month, sugar cubes, homemade air dry mud clay, and glue. I did have in mind that I wanted to do this activity with my kids for about a month before we actually did it which was helpful. During that month, I paid close attention to boxes that were going in our recycle. Whenever I was about to throw one out that was relatively square and flat, I set it aside. One of them was a contact solution box and one was a corndog box.

My kids had a blast working on this ziggurat. I thought there might be fighting, but thankfully they worked together. I built the base structure al on my own, then let my kids add on the sugar cubes and clay stairs. My four kids were somehow able to each work on one side of the ziggurat without fighting.

To go along with this ancient Mesopotamian ziggurat activity, we also read the Gilgamesh trilogy of picture books by Ludmila Zeman. While I think learning about Gilgamesh and the city of Uruk helped my kids appreciate the ziggurat even more, you don’t necessarily need this series. Check your library for books for kids about Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh the Hero by Geraldine McCaughrean is slightly longer, but another good option.

After I thought our ziggurat was complete, my 6 year old asked if we could build little houses around the ziggurat with sugar cubes and clay, so I said sure. That inspired me and I said, “Why don’t we pretend this is the city of Uruk where Gilgamesh lives?” We built a wall around the city since Uruk was known for its wall. My 6 year old then made 2 little people out of clay to represent Gilgamesh and his friend, Enkidu. In my opinion, this was learning at its best.

Ancient Mesopotamian Ziggurat Activity Details

Recommended Age Range: Kindergarten, Elementary
Time Required: 30 minutes – 1 hour
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Less than $3 in used supplies

Materials

• flat boxes of various sizes (ideally you will have 3 or 4 that stack on top of each other getting progressively smaller)
• large cardboard to use as base
• sugar cubes
• air dry clay (we used this recipe for mud clay)
• brown paper (optional – we just used the crumpled brown paper that came in packages and used this to wrap our boxes to give them a uniform look)
• paint (optional – we ended up not using it)
• glue (we used Elmer’s)
• paper plate or some other container to pour glue for dipping and paint if using

Supplies

• scissors
• packing tape
• tools for carving: skewers, forks, knives (optional)
• paintbrushes (optional – only if using paint)

Instructions

1. The first step was to make sure we had boxes of various sizes that could be stacked into a step pyramid shape. Once you have your boxes, tape them up so they hold their shape.
   
2. Next, I wrapped up the boxes in brown paper. You could also paint them. I did this step for my kiddos before we started just to make things easier.
   
3. Once you have your boxes of different sizes all wrapped up, hot glue each box on top of the next smallest box.
   You should end up with a stack of boxes in a ziggurat shape.
   
4. Next hot glue your ziggurat onto a cardboard base.
   
5. Cut out a piece of cardboard with a length slightly longer than your bottom box and a width that is about double the height of your bottom box. The exact dimensions are not crucial. Cut slits in that rectangle leaving a few inches uncut in the middle.
   
6. Make a triangular fold in the cardboard and tape it together as shown. Cut off any excess cardboard pieces.
   
7. Repeat on the other side. In the end, you should have a piece that looks roughly like this.
   
8. Hot glue this cardboard piece to the front of your ziggurat to represent stairs.
   
9. Now comes the fun part. Let your kids decorate the ziggurat with sugar cubes and clay. Paint is another option, though my kids ended up choosing not to paint their zigguart.
   
10. Since I have four kids, I let them each work on one side of the ziggurat. I showed them how they could use the clay to build a ramp, then use a skewer to create lines that looked like stairs.
    
11. Use pictures as guidance, then let their imaginations run wild on their homemade ziggurat!
    
    

Related Links

History Activities for Kids
Social Science Activities for Kids
Robotics Activities for Kids

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Now this process was not as simple as one might hope, but it wasn’t super complicated either. I did run into a few hiccups along the way that I had to overcome. My primary goal in writing this post is to document what I did in order to save myself some trouble in the future. If you are trying to figure out how to have your child’s book professionally printed, I hope it might be helpful to you too!

Choosing a Self-Publishing Company

To start, I looked into a number of online self-publishing companies. To be honest, my primary criteria was price. I knew I didn’t want to spend a lot. If it didn’t work out, then I would know not to use that company again in the future. Ultimately, I decided on lulu.com. Note that I am NOT affiliated with this company in any way.

I am very pleased with how my product turned out. Using a 15% off coupon, my total order including tax and shipping for one 9″ x 7″ small landscape hardcover book was $16.85. I recently placed an order for 9 more copies to “sell” to family members. Since I wills save on shipping costs, those books came out to $13 each.

Other options that I considered and you may want to look into were Blurb.com, BookBaby.com, Kindle Direct Publishing, and Barnes and Noble Press. As I mentioned, the main reason I went with Lulus was because it seemed to be the cheapest for the small hardcover book that I was looking to make.

Super-Concise Instructions

Simply put, there are only a few steps to creating a book. I will give a very unclear, but simple description of the steps here, then I will give detailed instructions for exactly what I did below.

1. Get your child’s artwork into a digital format (either by scanning or taking a picture of the pages).
2. Create a free account on the self-publishing site of your choice.
3. Put those pages in a document that you can save as a PDF. Add any extra pages you might want such as a copyright page or an about the author page.
4. Upload the document to the self-publishing website.
5. Create and upload another PDF document to specify how the front and back covers should look.

Detailed Instructions

Please note that as far as I can tell, you are going to need a laptop or computer to create the files you will need to have your book printed. You will not be able to do this on your phone. You will likely also need a moderate level of computer literacy. There are likely several fully acceptable ways to do these steps. I will explain how I did them, but that may not make the most sense for your particular situation.

Step 1: Getting your Child’s Artwork into a Digital Format

To even start creating your book, you will need to get your child’s glorious artwork on to the computer. I have a Brother compact desktop scanner which cost me almost $200 (full review here). Note that while I use this scanner all the time in my homeschool, it is definitely an investment. I will describe cheaper options below.

Using this scanner, I simply loaded my child’s work face down into the tray.

I then used the provided Control Center software to save the images as jpegs. I chose a resolution of 300 x 300 dpi and a scan type of 24 bit color. I made sure I knew where on my computer the files would be saved.

If you do not have my super amazing, multi-page scanner, the next best thing would be to scan them using a cheaper flatbed scanner. The downside to this option is that you have to scan them one page at a time. Here is a fairly inexpensive option at $89.

If you really just do not have access to a scanner, you can always just take pictures of the pages using a camera of phone. The downside to this option is that the quality of the pages will likely not be great. The whites will probably look more grey.

Once you have the images, if there are any little tweaks or fixes you want to do, now is the time to do them using photo-editing software. I used Adobe Photoshop, but that is a full tutorial on its own. However, my edits were minimal anyway. Many computers come with basic image editing software such as Paint.

Step 2: Get a Free Account on a Self-Publishing Site

As I mentioned above, I decided to create an account on lulu.com. You can do this by simply clicking the Register button in the upper right drop down menu.

Step 3: Create Your PDF Document

Assuming you decided to go with lulu.com as I did, once you have an account and are logged in, you will want to select Print Your Book.

Personally, I chose to have my child’s picture book printed as a “Photo Book” for the product type. This made sure that it had the best quality paper and ink. However, it appears that if I had chosen “Print Book,” I could have had the same book printed using Standard Ink and Standard paper for about $10 instead of $13. I am extremely satisfied with the way my Photo Book turned out, but in the future, I might try a Print Book, since maybe the extra quality did not make a big difference.

Next, you will be asked to select a goal for your book. One day I might see what happens if I click that publish button, but for now, I just wanted to print copies of my son’s book for our family. Therefore, I selected “Print Your Book.”

On the last section of the first page, you will want to enter in a Project Title under Book Details. You can also choose to fill in the Language and Category. I chose English and Childrens. Then click Design Your Project.

The first thing that happens is that you will be prompted to upload a PDF file with your interior pages in it. This might not be entirely straightforward so I will try to explain how I made my interior files below.

Note that one area in which I was briefly hung up was that the image above states that the page count can be from 2-800 pages. My son’s book was only about 10 pages long. Even with the title page, copyright page, dedication page, and About the Author page, it was only 14 pages. I kept having an issue when I tried to upload it until finally I figured out it was because it was too short. By looking through their creation guide it seems that maybe hardcover books cannot be under 24 pages, but I did not see this explicitly stated anywhere. I fixed this by making all the even pages in my document blank. That way the backs of all the pages are blank and my son’s story is only printed on the righthand side of the book. I like the way this turned out better anyway.

Another issue I had is that it is not immediately obvious what size books are available. This page on their site lists the different types of photobooks, however it doesn’t list their dimensions. The dimensions are important to know before you start creating your interior pages file. I found this page on the lulu blog which is a little more helpful. Basically, I decided that I wanted a Small Landscape, 9″ x 7″ book. Another inexpensive option is the Small Square which is 8.5″ x 8.5″. Lulu’s pricing page may also help you decide what size you book you would like.

According to the Lulu PDF Creation Guide, which is linked to in the section where it asks you to upload your interior pages, you may want to add 0.125″ bleed dimensions along each edge. They state that a 6 x 9 in book should have interior pages that are 6.25 x 9.25 in. Therefore, since I want to create a book that is 9″ x 7″, I want my interior pages to have a dimension of 9.25″ x 7.25″ to make sure that none of the images are cropped.

According to the Lulu PDF Creation Guide, you also want to allow safety margins of 0.5 inches in addition to the trim size of 0.125 inches. If I understand this correctly, in total, your document should have margins of 0.625 inches. If you have a large book, you may also want to allow extra white space near the inside edges of the book to account for the “gutter” that is formed along the binding. Since my book is not many pages, I did not worry about the gutter.

So to summarize, if you are making a 9″ x 7″ small landscape book, you will want to create a document that is 9.25″ by 7.25″ with 0.625″ margins. There are likely many programs you could use to make this document, such as Microsoft PowerPoint. However, I used the free Libre Office generic version of PowerPoint called LibreOffice Impress. You can download Libre Office for free here.

To make the document, I first opened LibreOffice Impress. Then from the menu bar, I selected Slide, then Properties as shown below.

From the properties menu, you can select the size of the page and the margins.

You may want your first interior page to be a copyright page. I did not look into how best to copyright a self-published book, since I am not planning on selling my child’s work. However, I found that the simplest way is to write “Copyright @ Year Author’s Name All Rights Reserved.” You can delete the text boxes that you do not want on the slide and add any additional ones. Here is a sample copyright page. If you click on the triangle to the right of the window, it expands a panel you can use to change the font and font size.

If you would like a dedication page, you can repeat this process of inserting a textbox on a blank slide to make a page for the dedication. You can right-click the panel on the left and select New Slide to make new slides. I usually delete the text boxes that are automatically inserted. Another option is to make one blank slide, delete the text boxes and then copy and paste that blank slide as many times as you want.

Remember that if you want the text to appear on the right hand pages only, you will need to leave the even pages blank.

When you are ready, you can start inserting the images that you scanned earlier. To do this, select Insert from the main menu bar, then choose, Image. You will need to know where your image files than you scanned or took pictures of are located.

Once your image is inserted, you can crop or rotate it if you like using the menu bars above the slide.

You will want to repeat this process with all of your images. Remember to leave all the even slides empty if you want the backs of the pages to be blank.

At the end, if you like, you can add an extra slide for an About the Author Page. I think this is a nice touch. You can insert text boxes and images to make the slide look how you want.

At any point during this process, you can choose File from the main menu, then select Save As to save your file as a LibreOffice file. It will have an extension odp. It is a good idea to save your work frequently.

When you are all done, you will want to export your file as a PDF to upload to the Lulu website. You can do this by using the File Menu, then Export As, then Export as PDF.

You will have some options on how you would like to save your PDF. The most important box to look at it so make sure your image quality is atleast 300 DPI.

Step 4: Upload your Document to the Website and Choose Options

Now you are ready to upload your interior pages document on the Lulu website. Simply click where it says Upload Your File, then find where you saved the PDF document on your computer.

Note that I received some warnings when I uploaded my file. I spent a long time trying to figure out what might be wrong. In the end, I decided to just have one book printed to see how it turned out. At least in my case, the book turned out great, so I wouldn’t worry too much about these warnings. Note that it also has the green checkmark saying that my book was uploaded successfully.

Once you have successfully uploaded your book, you will be able to scroll down and choose your options.

Note that the website already determined that my book is a Small Landscape (9 x 7 in.) book based on the dimensions of the uploaded file. It also knows the page count. I chose to have Color Premium pages, which gave me the option of 80# Coated White paper. If I had selected “Print Book” instead of “Photo Book” in the first step, I would have had options for less expensive Standard ink and paper as well.

I chose to have my book printed as a hardcover with a matte finish. My final book cost is $13, not including tax and shipping. Again, if you had selected “Print Book” instead of “Photo Book,” you would have less expensive options to choose from as well. For example, a paperback book of this size, even printed with premium ink and paper, was under $6 when I played around with the options.

Step 5: Create Your Cover and Upload it to the Site

The final step is to design your cover.

The website give you a number of options. Personally, I just chose to use LibreOffice Impress to create my file from scratch, as I did with my interior files.

To start, download the template that they provide. This will show you how the file should look, though admittedly, it might be a little confusing at first.

What I took from this document is that I want to create a file with is 20″ x 8.75.” Around the entire document is a 0.75″ border that will get wrapped around the book. In addition to that is a safety margin of 0.375.” That means the total margin of the document you create should be 1.125.” Additionally, there is area near the spine that you will want to avoid. That area has a width of 0.375″ + 0.25″ + 0.375″ = 1″. If you would like, you could try putting the title sideways along the 0.25″ spine, but I did not try this. It is such a narrow area that I thought there was a good chance it would not be centered perfectly and might look weird. Next time, I may try that.

To create this file in Libre Impress, follow the same procedure as before of creating new file, then opening Properties under the Slide menu. If you are making a book the same size as mine, set the width to 20″, the height to 8.75″, and all four margins to 1.125″.

If your new file was created with “Click to Add Title” and “Click to Add Text” boxes, you can go ahead and delete those. The next step is entirely optional, but I decided to create a temporary rectangle to block out where the spine would be to make sure my image did not overlap with this region. You may actually want the picture to continue into this region so it is entirely up to you.

If you do decide to include this rectangle, you can use the rectangle tool to create an arbitrary rectangle, then change the Position and Size values to put it in the correct place. It should be located at an X position of 8.375″. This is half the document width (10″) minus half the spine width (0.5″) minus a margin size (1.125″). The Y position should be -1.125″ (negative the margin size). The width should be the spine width (1″) and the height should be the document height (8.75″).

Now you are ready to add your front and back covers! You can use images, text boxes, whatever you like. I chose to use the cover my son made as the front cover. Then for the back cover, I cropped one of the images from the story to remove the text, then added a text box to provide a short summary of the story (also written by my son) as would be found on a traditional book.

Once you are done placing your images, DON’T FORGET TO DELETE THE BLUE BOX! Now you can select Export as PDF from the File menu. Again the only number which really matters is that you want the resolution to be atleast 300 DPI. Make sure you pay attention to where you save the file.

Now that you have your file ready and you know where it is saved, you can upload it to the Lulu website using the option “Upload Cover File.”

When I did this, I got a warning that my resolution might be less than 200 pixels per inch. However, I ignored this and it turned out okay.

Next you will be able to preview your book. Check out all the pages and make sure you are happy with it!

If you want, you can download your Print Ready Files and check them out as well. Next, select Review Your Book.

You are almost done! Click the checkbox to confirm your specifications and files. Then click Add to Cart!

When I did this, it told me my book was added to my cart, but it didn’t actually take me to my cart. To get to your cart, click the little cart icon at the top of the screen.

From your cart, you will be able to change the number of copies you want, as well as select your shipping and payment options.

You are done! Congratulations! These books took a couple weeks to get to me, so don’t expect delivery to be super fast. However, I am really happy with the final product. It was a bit of work to figure everything out, but I am happy I spent the time to create a product I will love forever. I am sure there are alternative methods that could be used to create the necessary files, but if you are trying to figure out how to have your child’s book professionally printed, I hope this post has been helpful to you!

Happy bookmaking!

Related Links

Learning Activities for Kids
Best Books for Kids
Free Printables

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