Homemade Rhyming Book- Made From Reused Valentines

Valentine's Day was over two weeks ago... are your kids still hanging onto the cards they received from friends?

Last week we decided to take advantage of all of the beautiful images on the valentines and use them to make our own homemade rhyming book.

My daughter's favorite books are Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle. The words are simple and books are repetitive, so we used them as inspiration for our homemade rhyming book.

Materials needed for homemade rhyming book:

• images cut from valentines (or magazines)
• glue
• scissors
• cardboard pages hooked together with a ring (we found this in the $1 section at Michaels)
•  typed or written text for your story

Directions for making homemade rhyming book:

1. Cut out images from valentines or magazines to use in the story.

2. Glue them onto cardboard book pages.

3. Write down or type up text for the story. My son has read the Brown Bear book enough to know the basic format. He named each character and then used the names to help me craft the story using the basic Brown Bear repetitive phrases. "Star Wars guys, Star Wars guys, What do you see? I see a ____ looking at me..."

3. Cut out text and glue it onto the book pages.

4. Read your story again and again together!

Repetitive predictable books are so great for language learning. You can read more about how to use books to enhance language learning over in Child Talk's post regarding books, toddlers, and language. She also shares a great list of simple repetitive books.

Do you have any other projects you like to created with leftover valentines?

What are your favorite repetitive or rhyming books?

Here are a few other reused valentines crafts that we've discovered this year...

Valentine's Keepsake Frame via Glittering Muffins

Recycled Valentine's Day Card Basket via Pink and Green Mama

We also created Scrap Paper Rainbows using some of our other valentines. They are perfect for St. Patrick's Day!

Make sure to stop by Quirky Momma on Monday morning to check out one other way that we've reused valentines at our house this year!