How To Fold A Mini Booklet

Do you use mini booklets in your classroom?  Have you taught your students how to fold their own yet?  It can be a bit tricky teaching students to make these at first, but once you have taught a class how to fold these little beauties the possibilities are endless!  Usually there are few quick learners who can help assist the few students who struggle with the last couple of steps...those are the trickiest for sure, and I am not entirely positive these directions make it crystal clear, but don't give up.  I promise it can be done!

What I L.O.V.E. about these particular mini-booklets is that all you need to make them is 1 sheet of paper and a pair of scissors. That is it. No staples, no tape, nothing else.  These are made with and 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, but you can do the same thing with a sheet of construction paper for a slightly larger booklet.

I put together my own little photo tutorial for you using these Coin Booklets to go with my unit on the novel Lunch Money, by Andrew Clements.  If you are familiar with the book, you know that the two main characters make their own mini comic books to sell at school. The style of mini book in the novel is different, but the tie in perfect, and students really love being able to make these all on their own. Once your students know how to make them they can be used for all sorts of different things throughout the year.

Step 1:  In this example you you need trim the outer edge of the paper.  If you are using a blank paper, or if you aren't as type A as I am, the excess border might not bother you.  It totally bothers me, so trim the outer edge off before starting.

Steps 2 & 3: Fold paper in half vertically and crease the center line. Open the paper back up, fold horizontally, and then crease the center line.

Steps 4 & 5:  Holding the paper horizontally, fold the left side of the paper to the center line, and then fold the right side of the paper to the center line.  You have now folded your paper into fourths.  Next, open your paper up again, and this time fold it in half horizontally, being sure to keep the folded edge of the paper toward your body. 

Step 6: Grab some scissors and start cutting  from the folded edge (the one closest to your body) along the center line to the center point of the paper. Be sure to stop when you hit the center point.  Look at the picture below if this doesn't make sense.

Step 7: Open your paper up and this time fold it vertically (hot dog). Then, pick up your paper so that the completely open side is facing the ground.  Next, take the right panel and fold it along the existing crease toward the back.  Do the same thing with the left panel.  Note the picture below.

Steps 8 & 9: This is by far the trickiest part to explain in words...not that the previous steps were all that simple, but the pictures hopefully help!  Essentially what you want to do is flatten your booklet and push the pages together. You may need to run your finger over the creases to really flatten your booklet.  What should happen is what you see below is step #9.  Your final step is to complete the booklet by folding the left panel to the back making it the back cover of your booklet.

If you have made it this far, hopefully you have a nice cute little mini booklet ready to fill with all kinds of fun stuff from math facts, to vocabulary illustrations, to whatever fun thing your students can imagine.

If you are interested in these coin booklets click the link below to visit my store.

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Needs vs. Wants

Oh the painful lesson of realizing that even though we really want something, we don't actually need it!  While we can know intellectually the difference between the two, it is sometimes much harder to distinguish emotionally.

Display a random assortment of items that includes some things that are "needs" and some that are "wants."  Group the "needs" together and the "wants" separately, but do NOT label them.  Allow your students some time to study the items and make observations.  Hold a class discussion based on the students observations. See if anyone can figure out why you have grouped them separately.  This will of course lead you into discussing the definition of a "need" vs. a "want." 

Needs vs. Wants

To follow up your discussion use this simple sorting activity designed to help primary students begin to make the distinction between basic needs and personal wants.   Their parents will thank you if you can make this concept stick! 

This activity can be used several ways.  One, as a learning station. Just laminate and cut several sets of the picture cards and have students sort them and then record their findings with the included checklist.  Or two, you can give each student their own set of cards to cut, sort and glue on to construction paper attaching the recording sheet to the back side or using it later as an assessment tool.

If you like this activity you can purchase it along with several other like it that cover early financial literacy topics such as:  Consumers vs. Producers, Goods vs. Services and Job Skills.

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