Need an idea of what to do with all those little construction paper cut-out books that your kids come home with during their first couple of years of elementary school? How about making a book box!
T’s “books” from his Transitional Kindergarten year and this year to date (the top two). I was going to spread this pile around for photo effect, but as I’d already gone through and organized it for its new home and for our needs, there was no way I was messing it up the pile again!
T really does love reading. This year, his teacher requests that we sit with him 20 minutes on average per night. That’s easy as I’ve been reading about that much if not more nightly since he was three months old (I’m not kidding).
Last year during T’s TK year, T came home with a mountain of all kinds of books. There were books on colors, shapes, sight words, and pretty much every season, holiday, and theme you can imagine. These little books came home weekly, sometimes a few at a time, and our solution then was to put them into a desk drawer in his room.
T decorates his book box for school and home. You can already see the two books he’s brought home during his first few days of Kindergarten inside!
We had a lot of letter stickers, so we were able to put a phrase on each side of the box. That rocked also!
Not this year. Mrs. K, T’s Kindergarten teacher, instructed all the kids to create a book box where they can keep their handmade books in one spot so they could be regularly revisited, re-read, and cherished in a special spot. The only directions we received were that the boxes were to be about shoebox or slightly bigger in size, either store-bought or hand-crafted, and whatever the child chose, the box was to have at least their name on it, if not a little extra flair to personalize it as their own. Fabulous!
Thumbs way up for reading, RMT’ers!
Of course, T had to put a few Star Wars stickers on his book box. He ran out of room along the sides, so on the top those went!
Since we have a LOT of stickers on hand, that’s the route we took. I went to Target and got a common plastic bin and then let T go to town. I did help him with some of the words he stuck onto the box (such as making sure we had enough sticker letters to start with before committing to certain phrases). Otherwise T did all of this all by himself.
T ready for school Monday with his new book box in hand!
And what a fantastic job T did! He was so proud and excited to go into school Monday and share his new book box with his teacher so much so he cornered her first thing in the morning on his way in. I just wish I’d gotten a photo of them together (darn it!).
T’s book box has a new home on his desk in his room. We need to work on getting the desk a bit more cleared off as the school years go by, but for now this works for us.
Thanks to Mrs. K for putting the “fun” in the phrase “Reading is FUNdamental”!
RMT’ers, what activity has your child’s teacher come up with to inspire your young, budding reader? Please share! We all can use any inspiration possible to keep up a love of reading.
Real Mom Time (RMT) 
Pingback: Raising a Reader: Several Ways to Support and Encourage (But Not Push) | Real Mom Time (RMT)