Folder Book Report

For our last set of book reports, I split the kids up. 

Makenna wasn't very happy with me in the beginning.  She loves doing the "fun" book reports with her brothers, but I wanted her to do at least one report style book report this year.  I'll post about her report a little later because right now, I want to show you the boys folder book reports.

They loved doing them.  Anything that lets them draw, cut and paste is pretty fun in their books.  I found the original idea for this report while perusing Pinterest during the year.  You can find it (and a template to download) on Thinking of Teaching.

I made a few changes to the template to better fit my boys and how we wanted to do our book reports.  It turned out pretty darn fun, although different than I originally thought. 

I'm not sure if my template ended up bigger or if the original from Thinking of Teaching had larger folders (do they make them bigger?), but our pieces didn't fit neatly like hers, so I ended up having the boys put some of their pieces on the back.  I also let them put the pieces wherever they wanted, I told them to think of it like a puzzle and make them fit however they wanted.  And they did. 

This is the front.  It includes a little information about the book with most of the room taken up by a picture which is always their favorite (both boys LOVE to draw).

Here's the inside for both boys.  Ben's is all brown, while James wanted his to be multi-colored.  It's interesting how they so fully express their own individual personalities in just about everything they do. 

We tried to make all our flaps different, just to make it a little more interesting.  This set of flaps shows a picture of the boys very favorite parts from their respective books.

This next set asks them to describe their favorite character.  It's interesting that James (the Kindergartner) will sit and write for a few minutes, but getting Ben (the 2nd grader) to write is, and always has been, like pulling teeth.  But they both got it done.

The fold-out-flap (my technical term, do you like it?) was by far their favorite to make.  This works on their summary skills by asking them to write about the beginning, middle, problem/resolution and ending.

The last flap is their review of the book.  They were to write how well they liked it, what they liked about it and who they would recommend to read it (if they would).

Here's the back of each of their book reports.  In addition to the flaps, they drew a picture of their favorite character and wrote the title, author, genre and who the report was by.

We did one section a day, cutting out the borders and gluing on two separate days at the end.  It went really quickly and the boys had fun.

I love learning with my boys, teaching them and watching their eyes light up with understanding.  It's one of the greatest gifts in my life. 

Do you have any favorite book reports?  I'm on the lookout for some fun ones to fill next year and would love to hear about any you've done or come across!