Cardboard Bookshelf Organizers

As Electra dives deeper into the world of (pre) reading and books, we're trying to get a handle on our bookshelf.  I made this Maisy cardboard bookshelf divider for Electra as an experiment to see if it would help her understand that we can group books, and also guide her in putting her books away more easily. So far the divider has helped on both accounts, and I'm hoping to make some more dividers that correspond with our seasonal books, like a Christmas tree for Christmas, a heart for Valentine's Day, and a jack-o-lantern for Halloween.

I traced the Maisy character onto computer paper, colored it, cut it out and glued it to the heavy duty wax treated cardboard I talked about in the Wheels on the Box post. I learned the hard way after hacking through a normal piece of corrugated cardboard that you really need the strength and rigidity of the waxy fruit box cardboard for this divider to hold up. (You can see my first and second tries below.)

I had to use quite a variety of tools to recreate Maisy's chiseled features, including scissors, craft knife and mini cardboard saw, so I'll have to get back to you on the quick and dirty way of getting through this tough cardboard. (If you have any suggestions I'd love to hear your ideas in the comment box.)

Maisy is a character from a series of books written and illustrated by Lucy Cousins. We especially love Maisy because we can get a bilingual version in English and Japanese that we check out from our local library. We have learned colors, shapes, textures and so much vocabulary from reading these books together. Maisy or Lucy, if you're reading this, thank you for all the adventures!

Alpha Beads: Learning to read in English or Japanese

My husband just started taking Japanese classes in the evenings after work, so everyone in the house now is learning to speak in one way or another. After stringing cardboard beads onto long strands to make mobiles, I started cutting out letters to make alphabet beads in both English and Japanese. Japanese has two phonetic alphabets called hiragana and katakana in addition to kanji characters (derived from Chinese characters). One of my biggest challenges when learning to read Japanese hiragana was recognizing the slightly different ways of writing the hiragana. I thought this activity of getting all the slightly different looking letters together would be a good exercise in recognizing environmental print (albeit out of context) for both my husband and my 2 1/2 year old.

Most of the flutes in the cardboard run vertically through the letters and create multiple channels for threading.

I have quite an unruly cache of cardboard accumulating in our small apartment and we have rounded up a good little collection of letters and hiragana.

The only materials we used for these picture stand-ups were cardboard boxes from the grocery store, sturdy scissors, (We have chicken boning scissors from my father, who uses them on the farm for their original purpose.) paper tape (more beautiful than plastic tape) and pipe cleaners or wire.

Use a strip of cardboard and some tape to make a little tripod on the back.

You can make mobiles, spell out words, or make strings of letters with needle and thread. How about a rudimentary version of Scrabble or some other kind of game? I served this mekan (pronounced mee-kon) (Japanese for tangerine) for breakfast. Fruit + chopstick + carboard beads. Mmmmmm.

Sandwiches are Beautiful ..... Sandwich Books are Fine!

The latest addition to our cardboard book library; a very delicious book about how to make a B.L.T. (Bacon, lettuce and tomato) sandwich. This book was easy to make and I had help from Electra painting the pages. We used the same process that I wrote about earlier in the How to Make Cardboard Books post. I used a type of tape made from white paper that could be painted for the binding. I touched up the spots where the book was adjoined after the whole thing was assembled. The coolest part was finding white cardboard for the bread that gave the look of "brown crust" when you cut the pages out. This is literally a recipe book for getting your child or toddler cooking in the kitchen!

Mmmmmm cardboard!

Big Fat Cardboard Book Booster Seat

When Isis took over the highchair, Electra needed a booster seat so she could sit in one of the big chairs at the kitchen table. We put together a big fat cardboard book for her to sit on. We found a box with a Japanese castle on it, so you could even say this seat is throne-like.

I sewed an elastic band to keep the pages from opening up when she was getting into and out of the chair. The beauty of it? It doubles as a leaf press!

How to Make Cardboard Books

The first cardboard book I ever made was for Electra's first birthday. It was filled with photos of her learning to walk and of places we had seen on day trips around Tokyo. Electra loved the book so much that she pulled off most of the pictures and peek-a-boo flaps I had pasted in. The beauty of the book was that we could easily add new pictures and tape to make any repairs. A second book ensued filled with photos of Electra helping out around the house doing things like sweeping, peeling garlic, putting groceries away and watering plants. It was a wordless book that opened up an incredible amount of dialogue (for a 1 1/2 year old) about our day to day life. We still love to look at our cardboard books together now, 1 year later and we have added many many more cardboard books to our library.

How to Make Cardboard Books:

Cut your cardboard pages and cover.