How to Make an Acrostic Book

In the fall at ECEC I presented this acrostic book idea.  I've been getting requests for the "how to" so here we go.

Now Grade 1 did these BEAR books in November and just recently

Grade 3 made these ARCTIC books.













MATERIALS REQUIRED:

- posterboard or manila tag
- die cut machine, circut, or just your trusty scissors
- colored paper
- stapler, jump rings, string, or whatever you want as the binding material
- glue
- paint, text, poems, schoolwork to fill in the pages

PROCEDURE:

Decide on a word for your book.  This ARCTIC book, 6 letters is about as long as I would go.

I pre cut the letters on the circut machine.  I have also used the manual die cut at the school, and with older grades had them cut the letters themselves using stencils or the old "create a letter from a rectangle" method.  For those of you who don't have access to a diecut machine check out your local scrapbooking store.  Often they will allow you to use their die cutting equipment for a small charge.

Once you have your letters, I'm using 4 inch, cut some strips of posterboard, manila tag, or heavy paper.  I cut the strips 4 inches wide and used the actual width of the original paper as my length.

Place the letters down on one full strip and mark it to determine the length that each page should be.

Cut your pages.

For Grade 3 I pre stapled, you could also work on them loose and bind them at the end.

The students were given the letters one at a time and then asked to glue them on the end of the pages.

We used tacky glue as the glue sticks just don't seem to be sticky anymore. (Don't get me started.....)

So it should look something like this now.

It's a good idea to mark in pencil where each page lies on the next page.  This will help you keep your content from going to far and peeking out.

Now you can fill in those pages.  Grade 3 wrote a report on the "ARCTIC" using the letter featured for each page. For example for A, A Polar Bear crosses the tundra, An igloo is a house made of ice and snow.

Grade 1 wrote words applicable to BEAR on each page, like B is brown, black, big, bushy etc.

My sample book had paintings (of course) and then words based on the letters.

A: awesome
R: rugged
C: cold
T: tundra
I: icy
C: climate

You get the idea.

Why not give it a try.

Here is some recent student work to show you.  Here are a few file folder books.

and the picture stretching from grade 3.  Great job everyone.   I hope everyone has a good Teacher's Convention and enjoys the long weekend.

See you soon.