Not Another Kid Craft!

Ok, I fully realize that last time I promised a non-kid-centric craft next time, but what can I say? I'm a pathological liar who apparently needs a life. Moving On....

Back when my son was very little and needed lots of molding, I needed a fun way to drill into his head what we expected of him and how he should be behaving without making him feel like I was constantly on his case. The result were these 3 books that I gave to him on his second, third and fourth birthdays.

I used them to help him understand the expectations of his new age, as well as to help prepare him for the big stuff: how to treat his new sister, to build excitement (instead of dread) about going to preschool, and encouraging him to give up thumb sucking. But mostly these books were a way for me to show him what a special kid I thought he was and how proud of we were of the person he was growing up to be.


I used little 5x7 photo album books that I found at Walmart for like $2. They have plastic sleeves for each page, so I would just make up my pages on card stock or construction paper and then slide them right in. If I could use a picture of him for the page, that was great, or sometimes I cut his head out and glued it into a scene I created. There were plenty of pages made out of stickers and my own drawings though. The pages with Evan on them were always the biggest hit with him.

There's not much more to making these....when I started each one, I would just sit down and make a list of all the new expectations and privileges he would have now that he was 2, or 3, or 4, then cobble them together into some sort of book. One year I tried to did the entire thing in rhyme, but then the next year I couldn't jump that hurdle again.
So there you have it...not only a lovely keepsake book that you child can treasure forever, but also a wonderfully manipulative parenting tool! What a grand combination!