Our Preschool Journal

Something new Anna is doing this year is keeping a preschool journal.  She loves to draw, write, paint, etc...and I wanted to give her a place where she could keep her stories and pictures, as well as practice writing.  

I picked up a mixed media spiral bound book at the craft store and adhered a piece of paper to the front with her name on it.  I let her decorate her name however she wanted.  She chose to do a new type of "splatter painting" we've been doing recently.

Inside, she adds her drawings, writings, letters, stories, etc.  The page above has her self-portrait.  For this page, I did encourage her to draw a picture of herself.  I added the date stamp above it so we would be able to remember when she did this drawing.

For most of the pages so far, she has a "story" in mind and usually draws part of the story and asks me how to spell certain words to write part of her story.  

The story above says "Snow White Leap" with a picture of Snow White dancing and leaping through the air.

On other pages, she will tell me what she drew/made and I will record either her story or what her drawing represents.  For the page above, she colored red and blue together to make purple.  

Some days I will either set something out with her preschool journal (stamps, stickers) or will have a little activity set up for her to do in her journal.  I'm planning to share more of our journal pages as we complete them!!

I keep our preschool journal and a big jar of crayons out in our kitchen.  It's not in her reach because that would mean that it would also be in her little brother's reach, but it is accessible at any time.  I love that she asks to "write" in her journal several times each week.  Hopefully as we get the playroom all set up I will be able to include some type of writing/creating center for the kids.