DIY: Instant paper books

My three-year old is very artistic. She loves to color, paint, cut, draw, etc. She is also very imaginative. We created our own little paper books to illustrate. Here's an easy way to turn a piece of paper into a little book.

I used a large piece of construction paper here. You can use a regular piece of printer paper, or get fancy with some scrapbook paper.

1. Fold the paper into eighths.

2. Fold your paper back in half "hamburger" style. On the folded seam, cut between the two "squares." Cut only one square deep. I used a marker so you can see where to cut.

3. Open your paper up again. You should have a cut in the middle of your paper.

4. Fold your paper in half again, "hot dog" style.

From the top view, it should look like this- folded seams on top.

5. Grab the ends of the paper and push them toward the middle so it looks like this:

6. Fold the pages together so they look like a little book. Tada!

Here's another version with a lot of little pages.

Here's my construction paper again.

1. Fold the paper into 4x4 "squares"

2. Cut 3 squares deep on the top and the bottom rows, cutting in the same direction. On the middle row, cut 3 squares deep going in the OPPOSITE direction. Check out the dashed lines I marked.

Cut

3. Beginning at the top corner, start folding back and forth.

4. When you get to the end of the row, fold DOWN one square and continue folding back and forth with the second row.

5. You should end up with a cute little book that looks like this.

We had a great time illustrating our books and "reading" them to each other.

When I was a high school Spanish teacher, we made these little paper books as study aids for my students. We wrote down all the Spanish verb tenses and their conjugations along with when to use the verbs, blah, blah, blah... Anyway, my point is, that they are good study aids for your older kiddos. :)

Endless possibilities.