***First off, congratulations to Becca Stanley for winning my Embroidered Owl on last week’s giveaway!  Thank you to everyone who entered!  That was our largest entered giveaway to date!  I’m going to try to do them more often, since it seemed like a hit.  Please stick around and keep coming back!***

My project I would like to spotlight this week is my boys’ Summer vacation books.  We worked on them all week in school, and they are so completely proud of them!

I have wanted to incorporate making a summer book of our big road trip into our school days, but it kept getting pushed to the following week’s to do list.  Finally, I just decided we needed to do it, and this was the week!  I am so glad we did it!  We have all had a blast with this project!

We have talked about and learned so many valuable things this week through the process of making these books.  One of my main lessons was to try Super glue before many other strong glues needed to hold these thick babies together!  The boys have learned about the author and illustrator of books.  They know the names and the difference between the two roles.  They learned what a title page was and where it is located in a book.  We talked about key events and order and sequence.  We pulled out the map and showed the path we took on our 25 day road trip, while talking about states and distance.  We talked about the difference in opinions and facts.  They did a mock interview and are now doing “show and tell” for all who will sit through their reading of their books.

I love the pride that was earned with the completion of this big project.  Everyday Caleb wanted to “finish” his book, so it really taught patience to work a little at it everyday.

We picked out flag fabric for our cover since we drove across the United States for our vacation.  Caleb created both boys’ covers by glueing and wrapping the fabric around big pieces of cardboard.

We glued postcards that we had collected at our different stops on sheets of paper to insert as pages.

The boys sorted through a huge pile of pictures from our trip to pick out the ones they wanted to use in their book.  It was so fun to see and talk about the different things/events we did as the memories came back to us.  It is really quite funny to see the pictures they actually choose to use in their books.  They might not the the ones I would have chosen, but it is their books!

We worked on writing as they created title pages for their books.

Everyday, Caleb wrote a sentence for his book.

You know we love dictation.  He also dictated lots of stories or memories to me for pages in his book.

We printed out maps and drew the route we took to and from California on our maps.  We talked about distance and the United States, and had a blast talking about places we would like to travel next.  Caleb wants to travel across a different country on the other side of the world now.  Dream big my boy.  I love it!

Once we had finished creating all our different pages, we had to sort them into an order for the book.  We talked about events with similarities/differences as we placed all the “same state” pages in piles.

I had plans to sew the pages together with my sewing machine, but our books were too thick with all the pages and card stock.  We opted to punch holes and string thread though them to bind all the pages together.  I then glued the two outside pages to the cover.  It has taken several different types of glue to figure this step out.

The boys are so proud of their creations!!  They worked so hard writing, cutting, gluing, and learning this week.  I am just as proud of them as they are.

Today, we also talked about being a hard worker and finishing strong.  They were not wanting to complete the last steps, but they came around and finished strong and I adore their results!

Thank you so much for reading this week’s Project Spotlight.  Thank you again for all of you who entered my giveaway and might have started following me in a new way!  I really appreciate it!!

Tomorrow, I am attending the Country Living Fair at Stone Mountain with a group of other DIY Atlanta Bloggers, and I am so excited about it!  I will be sure to share it with you next week!

Do you have big plans this week?  Are you going to check out Mitcham Farm?  I hope whatever you do, you have a wonderful weekend!  Happy Friday!!