This is the second idea in the blog series “Creative Ways to Use Cookie Cutters.” This time we are making a shape book. If you have younger kids, these shape books can encourage your young writers to write fun stories, descriptions, or summaries. For example, a child can draw (or cut out a small picture from a magazine) and describe a different flower on each page of her flower book.
Or your son could summarize the storybook, The Gingerbread Man. Each page can explain a part of the story where the gingerbread man kept telling each character that he couldn’t be caught. He is gobbled up by a fox at the end of the story, so the concluding shape book page can be funny, with cookie crumbs all over it and a fox licking his chops.
Grab a card stock paper for your front and back covers, and using the cookie cutter as a stencil, use a pencil to trace around the inside of the cookie cutter. Do this to both pieces, and cut them out. Now use the card stock shape as a stencil, cutting a stack of 3-4 sheets of blank paper at a time, to make this process go faster. You can make the book as thick as you want, as long as the staples will go through it. Staple the book all the way through on the side or on the top. Two staples will make the book more sturdy than one staple, but I decided to staple the top of the gingerbread man with one staple through the top of the head, and it was fine.
Now give these cute books to your sweet, dear children. If you don’t have any children, give them away to a Sunday School class at church, for prizes. You can make a shape book of a lamb, and tell the story about how Christ came to earth to be our sacrificial lamb.
Stay tuned for “Creative Ways to Use Cookie Cutters #3.” Hint: This next idea will come in handy at your next tea party.
Back when I lived in England as a teacher before I was married, I wrote a set of haiku. If you are not familiar with this type of Japanese poetry, it is only three lines, with five, seven, and five syllables. Haiku are usually about nature, and sensory details are used to bring out a moment frozen in time. Here are the haiku I wrote about England:
