Henry's ABC Book

 I would like to start off by apologizing for the poor quality of these pictures but I didn't want the flash to create a glare so some are a little fuzzy. And I am lazy and not going to retake them.

If your child is like mine, he/she loves to look at pictures of themselves. If there is a video with Henry in it, he will watch it over and over again. He loves to see pictures of himself from a baby to a big boy and he loves looking in the mirror. From this fascination with seeing himself I came up with an idea to make a book all about Henry and the ABC's.

This is a relatively simple project once you have all the pictures taken and printed. I simply used sheet protectors with the holes cut off as the base of the book. Each letter has its own half page which is just a 8.5x11 piece of card stock cut hamburger style and then I shaved about 1/4 inch off each sheet so I could sew the book together. The card stock pieces will measure 8.5x5.25".
The pictures were printed in 4X6".

I cut out two sets of the alphabet using my cricut. One in white in the shadow version so it would be bigger and one in black in a normal font. The white letters I glued to the card stock after gluing the pictures in place. I then wrote each word using a sharpie. The smaller letters were contacted papered to be used as a sort of puzzle. I attached small pieces of velcro to both letters so they can be removed and then put back in their spots. I have already seen a big improvement in Henry being able to match the letters.

I assembled all the pages making sure the letters would be in order once the pages were sewn together. Sewing this smooth and thin plastic was really easy on my machine. I sewed the binding about three times. I then sewed shut all the open sheet protector edges. It really was that simple. The hardest part was accumulating all the items but Henry had a lot of fun being directed around the house to have his picture taken.

 a: apple  b: baseball bat

 c: car  d: dog

 e: eggs  f: family

 g: glasses  h: hat

 i: ice cream  j: juice

 k: kitchen   l: laptop

 m: mickey mouse  n: nightlight

 o: ocean  p: pajamas

 q: q-tip  r: ray

 s: strawberry  t: turtle

 u: umbrella  v: vacuum

 w: wand  x: X

 y: yogurt  z: zipper

Tip: Try and find pictures you have already taken that would work for some of the letters, keep a checklist and mark them off as you find them. I also put the picture files in a folder on my desktop so they were easy to find for printing. If you have older kids, they could even help come up with their own idea for each letter.