My daughter who is in 4k comes home with at least 3 drawings every day. She can draw during free choice or nap time (she won’t nap). Plus with the drawing she does at home, we have collected hundreds of drawings. I’ve saved almost all of them. Her favorite things to draw are My Little Ponies, Paw Patrol characters and people. By far, she has more pony drawings than anything else. I don’t bother sorting them, I just take them all and put them in a large plastic tub under her bed. A few of them end up on the refrigerator or on her wall.
I decided to make a hardcover photo book with all of my favorite drawings of hers. I used Walgreens online photo book maker, but there are lots of other places to make photo books (Snapfish, Shutterfly, etc.). They run specials every few weeks, so you can make your book and then wait for it to go on sale or have a discount code.
First, I sorted all her drawings and picked out my faves. Then I photographed them and uploaded them to the Walgreens photo website. From there, I picked out the cover, page themes and decorations. Daria chose which backgrounds she wanted and she picked out little digital stickers to place on some of the pages. She liked the balloon and heart stickers so those are on most of the pages!
These are some of her early early works.. around age 3.
On the left are some Paw Patrol characters and the right is Anna/Elsa/Olaf from Frozen.
She made hand turkeys at school. Plus a dog and another Paw Patrol.
Lots of ponies.
There were many more pages, but you get the idea from these pictures!
Some other ways to use photo books:
1. Make a photo book of your students working on art projects. Display in the front office as advocacy for your program.
2. If you teach as a classroom teacher, you could make a class book with lots of your students’ artworks… kind of like an art yearbook. Share the link with the parents so they can order a copy.
3. Make a book with artwork from your students to use as a visual portfolio for interviews.
4. Have your students write and illustrate a story. Compile them all in a photo book to keep in your classroom library.
Do you have any other ideas for ways to use photo books?
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After listening to or reading about a holiday or important event, engaging in verbal discourse (small large groups), each student could illustrate and write their response to a relevant statement or question. For example, Martin Luther King, Jr. and his vision for peace, Thanksgiving, or Cinco de Mayo. The teacher could make a photo book from the students’ work using your method or simply bind the pages together and keep the book in the class library.
What a fantastic idea! Thanks for sharing.