WDW guidebook idea for early reader

[MinnesotaChill]

I've just ordered two Guide to the Magic books for my boys for our upcoming trip in January. One is the Kid's Guide to the Magic and the other is the Lost something or other book. Both look terrific. My plan is to wrap them up for Christmas and then put a note on them that they are not to be opened until the plane takes off for WDW.

My problem is that my daughter is a struggling reader and I am having trouble finding one for her. The beauty of the other two is that there are activities and things to read. There are places for autographs and rating systems for rides and all kinds of neat stuff. Something to do on the plane and then also to do while we're down there. I've gotten the Birnbaum book for kids before, and that's good too, but I don't know that she'll be very interested in it, since we just had one a few years ago. Any ideas?

 

[Debi]

Bump!

 

[Jenniww]

My son is a slow reader thanks for the tips on the activity books. I must say he can sit and look and read the park maps for days. Stop by AAA if you're a member and pick up some before you go. My son loves looking and talking about what he is going to do.

It looks like we both with be in WDW at the same times for grand gatherings. We arrive the 20th and are staying at All* Movies.

Have a great trip!

 

[MinnesotaChill]

No one can help me? I am bumping my own topic for the weekend, since so many more people seem to surf the disboards then.

My daughter is going to be heartbroken if I can't find a book for her... she already feels so dumb compared to her uber reading brothers!

 

[SueM in MN]

My suggestion if you can't find a book that fits her needs is to make one for her that is totally suited for her needs.
You can use ideas from the 2 books you got for your sons as inspiration and go from there.
It might sound kind of daunting to make a book, but if you have a word processing program (like Word) on your computer or if you have Powerpoint, you have what you need to make a book.
You can get pictures from the internet and insert them into the text of your book. If you have a digital camera, you may even be able to take some pictures of some of the things you like from your sons' books and just insert the picture into the book too.
There are also lots of resources on the internet for making games like Word Searches and Cross Word puzzles. A lot of teachers use these, so you may be able to get some help from your child's teacher about good sites to use. Since you are the one inputting the words to be used, you control the reading level. You can even generate things like mazes.
just do a google search for 'word finds' or for 'teaching tools' and you will find a lot. The ones I gave links to were all from Discovery.com. If you go to their Teaching Tools front page, you will find a lot more ideas - some you might not think of like making fill in the blank quizes about WDW. Tests are not fun when they are about school, but when they are about WDW, lots of fun.
Another thing I thought would be fun would be some Bingo boards with things you might see at WDW - either pictures of things that you get off the internet for her to find or words for different things she might see, like Mickey, Minnie, ice cream, popcorn.

After you get the book all done, you can print it off and take it to someplace like Kinkos to be laminated and bound with one of those plastic spiral binders. That would allow the book to lay flat for use. Your DD's teacher might be willing to have it laminated and bound at school for you (most schools have that capability) since using the book would be educational. The teacher may also be able to help you with ideas and/or words to use so that the book is enjoyable and really educational in a way that doesn't feel like she is being taught.
If the pages are laminated, she can use a China marker/grease pen or possibly a non-permanent marker to write in the book. That way, no worries about making a mistake - if she does, she can erase it easily. She would also have to ability to erase it and do the activities over and over again.
You could just laminate the covers or all the pages (be sure to leave some at the back that are not laminated for autographs). You could also have some blank pages at the back for scrapbooking and journaling, to make the book really her own. You can buy stickers for scrapbooking at many shops.

 

[SueM in MN]

I looked up the website for the Guide to the Magic Books and they are really neat. The stickers are cool and the books look really interesting and nice.
That made me think of another possibility.

You could get a Guide to the Magic book for her and alter it to meet her needs.
For pages where there is too much text for her to handle, rewrite the text into stuff you think she can read and replace the text in the book with that. You can buy printer paper that is sticky on the back, which would make it easier to replace the text.
For other pages that have too much text, you could replace the text with more pictures.

This sounded like a good idea until I saw that the book has 200 pages - that might be a bit overwhelming for you to work on and for her to look at.

It might be worth a try to write the company, explain your problem and see if you might be able to purchase just the stickers that come with book normally. Those would be really nice to have whatever you end up doing and she would not feel as left out since she had the same stickers as the other kids.

 

[MinnesotaChill]

WOW! Those are great ideas Sue! I especially love the Bingo idea. My mom did that for our kids on a houseboat trip last year and they loved it. It took them the entire week to finish it. Actually, no one ever did see a black bear, thank goodness. So we've had no official winner yet!

 

[SueM in MN]

You're welcome.
Hope some of them work out for you.

Another thing I thought of is that there are some programs for printing scrapbook pages, which would give sort of the 'look' of the pages in the books you bought.
Apple computers have that capability in the program iPhoto that comes with all Mac computers. The computer has a storybook template that you add jpgs (more about this later) to and can then either send for printing as a bound book or print on your own computer.

There are some similar programs available for Windows. My sister has used the Storybook Creators software on this website : www.creativememories.com
The software is a free download; you can try it out from there, but I don't think you can print (except by sending it to the company for printing) unless you buy the more expanded version of the software.
I don't know if they have a store, but they are based in St. Cloud. I have not tried the software because I have a Mac and the software is only Windows, but my sister likes it.
That site also has a Disney album and a set of Disney scrapbooking pieces.

I could not get the Archiver's website to work, but I know there are a lot of them in the Twin Cities and you can probably find lots of Disney stuff at one of their shops.

There are other scrapbooking programs - here's a link to a review of some of them.

Now, about jpgs.
jpgs are a type of file format that is usually used for pictures. But, some programs will let you save files as jpgs. For example, I used Powerpoint to make some title slides for a slideshow of our pictures recently. After I made a slide for each part of my slideshow, instead of saving it as a Powerpoint Presentation, I saved each page as an individual jpg file. That let me insert those pages into the slideshow exactly the same way as I inserted a picture. You could do the same thing for text you want to put in your DD's book. (NOTE: I am not positive that the WIndows version of Powerpoint will let you save pages as jpgs since I have nver tried to do so on my Windows computer at work).

If you do get pictures off the internet, you want to look for jpg format and pretty big ones. Otherwise when you you make them bigger to put into your document, they will get all pixilated. Google search will do an image search. If you don't find what you are looking for, try changing the search words.

 

[erinmomof2]

The ideas posted here are great! Another idea about making your own book is to take some pictures from your son's books (or find some online) and you can use snapfish or Walgreens (I personally use Walgreens, just cause I'm more familiar with their store) and you can make a hard bound book. I think for a book with about 20 pages it's $15-20. You select which picutures you want on what pages, they even have backgrounds you can use if you want, and you type in whatever you want that page to say. Once you're done you submitt it and they'll print up the book, put it in a hard book cover (just like the books they sell at the store) and ship it to you. It's really easy, it took me less than an hour, and the result looked like a purchased book. The only difference is the cover is a solid color, no title or pics on it, but other than that it would look just like a book you could buy in the store.

Hope that helps! Have a great trip.