The Debut of "My ABC Walk"

I've been trying to encourage Trevor's interest in photography.  The last time we headed out for a walk, I offered Trevor the camera and challenged him to take a picture of something that starts with each letter of the alphabet.  He was thrilled.  He loves taking pictures and he loves challenges. Here are a few of his better shots from our walk:

When we got home, I put all of Trevor's pictures into Picasa and showed him how to crop.  He happily cropped away for the next 30 minutes.  It was so neat seeing him look critically at his pictures and crop to develop a focal point.  I was going to leave it at that, but Trevor said he wanted to make his photos into a book.  What a great idea!!

We printed out his pictures (onto normal printer paper, as we don't have a photo printer), then he sorted them by letter.

Meanwhile, I gathered supplies to make a book: 7 sheets of blue copy paper (trimmed to 6.5 x 11.5 inches), a paper piercer, blue embroidery thread, a needle, glue, and a pencil.

I folded each sheet of paper in half and stacked them.  Next, I used the paper piercer to punch holes along the fold line.  I threaded the needle, then waited for Trevor to finish his sorting.

I did a quick demonstration of how to do a backstitch, then had Trevor take over.  He caught on immediately.  And because the holes were already there, he didn't have too much trouble doing the actual sewing.  The finished binding looks very professional and is very sturdy.

Next, we glued all of the photos into his book.  (I put the glue on the back, but he placed the photos where he wanted.)  Then he did the writing independently.  He asked for spelling help a few times, but otherwise did it all himself.

For the front cover, we used the one photo I took during our walk... a picture of Trevor.  The back cover is an awesome self-portrait.  Here are some of the pages from Trevor's completed book:

 

 

 

 

And here is the author showing off his first book!  He is so incredibly proud of it.  And I am so proud of him.