How to Make Books for the Grandkids

By Grandma Sandy | August 27, 2025

Looking back over five years of blogging, I can add more input to previous posts with the advantage of hindsight and experience.

So today, I’m revisiting the time I made board books when the grandkids were babies.

Doll sits with a homemade board book made by a grandma for a toddler. The book is made with cardboard, photos, clear adhesive film, and binder rings. — **Baby Lucy looks at a homemade board book customized for Miss T.**

In this revised version, I’ve come up with two less-expensive options for making these books and provided more details about images to collect.

You’ll need cardboard, photographs, clear adhesive film, and binder rings to complete this satisfying, DIY project.

Check out the updated story HERE.

Benefits of a Board Book

A board book, customized with images of the child’s favorite people and things, is a good way to introduce a toddler to the concept of books. Book pages that are easy to manipulate and simple words to identify each familiar image, sets a child on the path to reading. And best of all, it’s handmade by grandma with love!

Toddler "reads" a custom-board book made by grandma. — **Miss T would rush to the picture window to watch this familiar bus go by.**

We all know that reading to your child offers many benefits, such as developing language skills, enhancing receptivity to learning, and building empathy. Learn about more benefits from Child Mind Institute.

Other “Call Me Grandma!” Book Ideas

In our family, we all love reading. We must have hundreds of books collected over half a century–art books, culinary books, history books, novels, classics, biographies–as well as e-books and audio books. We also make good use of our local libraries, borrowing books in person and electronically.

So, at “Call Me Grandma!” I’ve created a few other projects around books with–or for–the grandkids.

Books to Create with your Grandkids

Make cut-and-paste books to encourage grandkids as young as three, to create their own stories. We start with a wide collection of magazine images that kids can examine. They are encouraged to order these images to tell a cohesive story. These simple books challenge kids to use their imagination and make logical connections from one image to the next.

Grandma and grandchild review magazine images. The grandchild is challenged to use the images to tell a story. — **Miss T, at three, reviews the images and orders them to create a story.**

We created more complicated books with typed stories to prepare Little N for kindergarten.

One of our cut-and-paste books. This original story was written by a child in the summer before starting kindergarten. — **Litt N’s story** **features a rooster who drives a van.**

Books to Create for your Grandkids

I crafted a felt book for Miss T to pack on her first overseas trip as a toddler to entertain her on the long plane ride. The felt images are traced from cookie cutters. Velcro enables the images to adhere to the felt book.

A book of felt pages sets the stage for storytelling. The images are traced from cookie cutters on felt. — **Make a felt book; baby can attach felt shapes that are backed with Velcro.**

Make a book to preserve family stories. For example, Steve and I have collected Christmas ornaments over more than 50 years, and quite a few have stories about their acquisitions. I took photos of the ornaments and documented their origins in a book of ornaments using Snapfish.

Pages from a photo book of family Christmas ornaments; each photo tells a story of how it was procured. — **A book of our Christmas ornaments and their origins.**

Make a binder of your holiday traditions and related recipes. I made one for each of my sons 15 or 20 years ago. It’s a low-tech project using basic, three-ring office binders. These binders include photos from Christmases past to illustrate the narrative.

Use an ordinary office three-ring binder to create books for your children to document family traditions. Use photos and recipes to illustrate your book. — **A binder of recipes and stories abour our family Christmases**.

Still to Do: a Book on Grandma Style

Miss T and I had a talk when she was six about why I want to make everything beautiful. I’ve always thought that one day, I would produce a bound photo book of my table settings and household decorations through the years, as a legacy to inspire them to create beauty.

I’ll use Google Photo Books or another such photo book service. I have the name for it already: “Grandma Style!”

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