Booklets are popular around our house.  It seems that the pre-second grade crowd is especially fond of making their own booklets and it is a great way to reinforce lessons.  I use the half-page booklets most often – this just means that each side of a piece of paper will have two pages on it.  There should be four pages on each piece of paper, front and back. Make sure you leave your document in logical order because the printer will make sure the pages are arranged so you can just print, fold, and bind.  

 

Printer Trick

Did you know that you can make almost any multi-paged document into a booklet using just the options that come with your printer?   Go into the preferences for your printer and check out what it can do!  It will take some trial and error, to get things just right, but it is well worth the effort.

 

If you have an HP Officejet 6210 All-in-One plus MS Word (or Adobe Reader), then you can use these steps to help get you started.

 

1. Open a document with several pages in Word or Reader.  It helps to have a footer with page numbers turned on to visualize how it will print out. 
2. Chose  File – Print – click on Preferences.
3. Looking in the Printing Shortcuts tab, you will see it ask “What do you want to do?”  Use the dropdown arrow and choose Booklet Printing.  
4. Click Okay to close the Preferences window, and Okay again in the Print Dialog box to print the document.

 

Good luck!

Here are some ideas on what to put in your booklet

 

• Scan in your childrens artwork
• Use construction paper for the cover
• Put chores or goals on each page and use it as a reward sticker book
• Create a pictionary
• Use light grey font color for children to trace in words
• Create themed booklets like shapes, ABCs, numbers, etc.
• Use a sewn binding (older kids) or just staple
• Make a mini journal
• Dot-to-dots, mazes, other puzzles
• Autograph book (This is great for family reunions.  Have relatives sign, and make sure they add their relationship to you – this really aids genealogy projects.)