Paperbag scrapbook concept books

This is a simple project that you can do with your children that can not only teach them simple concepts, but make memories at the same time. I made this book with my oldest daughter when she was young. It was fun to go through family pictures and remember good times. It was also a fun project to work on together.

You can make any kind of scrapbook you want with this method. We chose to make it a family number book. Each page has a picture with a different number of people in it. As you can see here, it starts with one person. My daughter, Jessica, who helped make the book gets that spot. The next page has two people. And so on. There are only five people in our immediate family so, as we progressed from 6-10, we expanded it to include grandparents, cousins and so on and widened the circle of relations. You could do it to include friends as well.

To make a number book to include 10 numbers you will need:

3 small paper lunch bags
hole punch
ribbon
scrapbooking paper
scrapbooking glue or adhesive stickers
pictures with groups from 1-10
number stickers
letter stickers (optional)

Fold the bags in half and punch holes in the "spine".
Stack the bags together to make a book and tie with small pieces of ribbon.
After you have chosen your pictures, find coordinating scraps of scrapbooking paper to add a colorful back ground for your pictures.
Glue your paper and pictures to each page.
We used whimsical number stickers to number each page, but you could just write them if you want.
We also used some fun letter stickers to add a title to the front cover and "The End" on the back. You could write it if you want.

We just happened to have a fun picture from a children's museum that had the numbers 123 in it to make a fun picture for the cover.

You can use the same method to make other concept books such as ABC, opposites, etc. We used pictures that we already had, but it would be fun to take pictures with your child just for the book. That way the concept is being learned both in the taking of the pictures, making the book and reading it afterwards.

Have fun!

Jen