We love looking at photo albums. My son loves to get out his baby book and see how cute he was. It’s fun to look at pictures of personal things. So I thought it would be fun to come up with a personal book of colors using pictures from around our house.
Supplies for Color Picture Book:
- Camera
- Photo Album
- Colored paper – all colors of the rainbow
For each color, we took 3 pictures of 3 different things. We started with red and took pictures of things that are the color red: tomatoes, Elmo, and a magnet. Then we wrote the word “red” on a red piece of paper that’s cut down to size, fitting in a slot in the album. I also wrote the word of the object for each page so we could read it like a book.
The kids loved finding all kinds of colors in the house and wanted to include soooo many more pictures of their things. We may have to make a sequel to this one.
It’s been fun to look at our Color Book and see some of the kids favorite things. I think I may try this with letters next, taking pictures of items that start with letters of the alphabet.
Written by Marie LeBaron
Marie LeBaron is the founder and managing editor of Make and Takes. Always having a love of crafts, she enjoys getting messy with glue and glitter. There’s always some sort of project going on, her kitchen counter is often cluttered with crafts. When she’s not crafting and creating with her kids, she loves to run, read, and blog! Read other posts by Marie
{ 36 comments… read them below or add one }
This is such a great idea! I had a similar idea to make an alphabet book for my niece, but I was may overambitious. I tried to make it rhyme and was doing it scrapbook-style instead of just a small photo album. So, of course, I never finished it. This is much simpler and still really cute.
I love this idea!! Can’t wait til my 14 month old grandson is a little older. Meanwhile I can make one with favorite toys, etc.
I think it’s a fantastic idea, too! I did a similar thing with emotions/feelings – I used family photos on laminated pages.
This is a terrific idea!
I have a 2 and a 4 year old. This will be a great project for both of them, one can learn the colors and the other can work on spelling!
Thanks.
great idea, kids would love this!
Marie I am amazed by you. You are always thinking of great things to do with and for your kids. My two youngest would love this. Where did you find that little photo album? Thanks again for so many good activities. Your an awesome Mom/person!!
This is so cute. I did an ABC book for a friend’s daughter incorporating pictures of family and her favorite things for each letter. Shutterfly has an ABC photo book that’s really cute. I did one for my son since his baby book is still a work in progress and he’s 3! He loves to look at it and ‘read’.
This would be so fun… I need to do this. I love your ideas, thanks for sharing them with all of us.
I absolutely love this idea! What an easy and fun activity my nieces would love! Thanks for sharing this- it’s wonderful!
We did and ABC book and another one using pictures of each child’s first words. Then they could “read” the words. One hint though, if your children are like mine, use a piece of packing tape to seal the top of each page. One of my daughters liked to pull out all the pictures and ended up ripping quite a few of them before I noticed.
Great, fun, easy idea!
oh wow.
i just love this idea so much.
i am going to make one with my son.
he is really struggling with his colors.
i adore your blog.
thanks for all you share!
I bet your kids are going to be such confident people, because you empowered them to do “adult”-like projects when they were young. I love the implicit reminders I get in each post to include our kids in ways that sometimes we wouldn’t think they’d be capable of.
What a perfect idea for my grand-daughter! Will have to do this! Thanks!
Kara – the photo album came from Walmart for $1.
Susan – Good thinking on taping the photo opening. Packing tape is great. When my son was younger, I used regular tape, but he was able to get through That.
This IS a fun idea. I’ve also done them at school with my children with different size Ziploc baggies. Cut the papers and place two in each baggie and staple the baggies together like a book. They love and treasure their books and it’s VERY simple!
I LOVE it! I just happen to be doing a color unit this week, so guess what just got added to my agenda! :) Thanks!
I love this idea! Those books will be read and loved over the years :)
brava, thanks, Love this idea. Was thinking of doing one for numbers too, with different items I can find around the house.
Love it.
What a fabulous idea! I can’t wait to make one with my 3 & 1 1/2 year olds. We’ve been working on colors, so this will be perfect for them. I love that they can help pick out items of each color. Thank you for sharing all of your amazing ideas. Bravo!
Hi Marie
What a fabulous idea. I recently posted an entry on my blog (titled “colour my world”) where I made up a “game” for my daughter to learn her colours.
Elise
Fantastic idea! Thanks for sharing.
Those little photo albums are perfect for this! Great idea – thank you for sharing another practical project! I have also used these little albums for recording a single event instead of scrapbooking on 12×12 pages….for instance….first day of school or Halloween, etc.
That has got to be the coolest thing ever! I love this idea & will definitely do it with my babies.
I love this site. I just happened upon it the other day and everything I look at I think, “I can do that!” All the other websites I have found that are similar seem so hard and time consuming. I don’t have much time with little ones running about…so thank you so much! I am sharing this with everyone I know!
oh, and I did that color book thing a few years ago but instead took pictures of my kids in different colored clothes…it turned out really cute but was a lot more work! I love this idea!
What a great idea! I can’t decide if I’m going to wait until my 1 year old is old enough to help me out with this or if I should just do it myself!? Thanks for the idea! We’ll for sure be doing it!
Such a fun idea. We have made tons of these over the years. Another fun idea is to take lyrics from a song you love and photos of the kids or things you are familiar with and make a little book like this. We did several for Father’s Day with primary songs and they are some of the boys favorite books.
Wow, I love it! This will be a fantastic Christmas gift for my 15 month old from my almost 6 year old – she’ll adore taking the photos and putting it all together. Thanks so much.
I’m loving all the alternative ideas for this photo book:
ABC’s
First words
Numbers
Emotion with people’s faces
Kids in colored clothing
Song lyrics
LOVE this idea! I’d actually thought of something similar this summer for my 1-year-old and had already gathered up and photographed her toys in color groupings, but your presentation is a much, much easier approach than what I was planning, and I’d far rather do it your way! :-) Way to go, and thank you so much! And the alternative ideas listed by Marie are great, too. Definitely going to do this! Thanks for posting. (By the way, I found your site through Craftzine’s feature of your project. Love your site!)
I am a preschool teacher and will use your idea to help teach colors. I will take pictures of objects from our classroom and label them. Thanks for sharing your idea. I am currently working on a class book “What We Like to Do At School.” I am taking photos of the children and writing ‘simple’ sentences, such as ‘Amy likes to go down the slide.’ The children love to see themselves pictured in our hand-made class books. I can’t wait to add the ‘Classroom Book of Colors’ to our collection of hand-made books.
Very clever. Now I know what to do with all those little albums I have been meaning to find a home for.
What a great idea! So simple but really nice! Thanks for sharing.
I love this idea. My son is 21months old and struggling with learning his colours and numbers so I’m going to make seperate books for him and might even use the alphabet idea when he’s a bit older. Only having trouble finding the photobook as we live in the UK. x
I only just found this post today while searching for personal photo book crafts. I was looking for ideas for an ABC book. I made one for my son (15 months now) from our winter vacation and I am planning to make one for our summer vacation. I used the same kind of photo album you did, but I pulled out the middle pages to make it the right number. I also made one on Shutterfly (or Snapfish, or something) that was a little fancier for when he gets older.
This spring I made a color book for my son’s Early Head Start classroom. I took pictures of things around their classroom and made a photo collage for each color using Shape Collage and then made them into a little book. The kids there (9 months to 3 years) loved finding the things in the room I used in the book. I am going to do a counting book this year.