Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Tuesday Fun! - "My Journal" For Kids

Good Day! Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend, and for all of you moms out there, I hope your Mothers Day was as good as mine was! My hubby treated me to some new shrubs and flowers for the front yard!! I may have worked my behind off on my special day, but it was so much fun I didn't want to stop! The yard looks wonderful now, and that makes me unbelievably happy.  (Major Kudos to my hubby for that!)  Zoe gave me a hand colored rock, and a flower she picked on a walk with her papaw the day before. :)  Iris gave me a framed photo of herself, she picked the frame out all by herself and paid with it with her own money too.  All in all it was a great day, and I am so thankful for what I have.  

Ok, enough gushing!.....

Today's tutorial is a project that I finished months ago, but only came across the other day.  I got the idea from something I had found on the Internet, but didn't want to pay $30 for! 


Basically, this a guided journal.  I made one for both of my girls, and my niece.  I put various fun questions on a page and then a space for the girls to fill in their answers.  I also added a few games, pictures and coloring pages as well.  Let me tell you, the girls LOVED their journals.  I just gave the journals to them yesterday and all three of them immediately started flipping pages and saying things like "Ohhhh I want to start on this one!", "Who wants to play Tic-Tac-Toe with me??".  This would be a great way to keep them busy on a long trip too.  I am actually thinking of putting one together for just that purpose.  Maybe more games? 

I printed all of these on 4x6 plain index cards, but obviously, you can make them any size you wish.  I wanted them to be small enough that they could throw them in their bags (or my purse).




There are tons of pages, as you can see from the above picture.  You could customize this anyway you want to, the possibilities are endless!  Like I said, I am thinking about making a travel one. You could make one that is all story starters, all games, all coloring...whatever you like, or whatever your kids like.  This took me a while to put together, but that was simply because I made it from scratch, and didn't really know what direction I wanted to go with it.  

When you are creating the pages, there is no need to format the page in Word to the size you are printing.  Just make sure when you are getting ready to print, you select the correct paper size.  Word (or whatever processor you are using) will shrink it to size. Also make sure that if you have the option, check "shrink to fit paper size" or something along those lines so that every bit of your page makes it on the smaller one.

When I was finished printing and compiling all of the pages, I simply hole punched  the pages and added metal rings to hold it all together.  Iris commented that she liked the way she could fold the pages underneath one another without bending any of them. (Score one for mom!)

So there you have it, another kid friendly project! You could collaborate with the kiddos ( I wanted mine to be a surprise) and come up with page ideas together. Maybe make a "Mommy and Me" journal? 

Let me know what you come up with! It's hard work, but its so much fun and so rewarding to see the smiles on their faces when you give them their personal journals.

Have a wonderful day everyone, Zoe and I are heading out to get her birthday party goodies.  (Ahhhh, I am so behind on this party stuff. I am usually on top of it! )


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