Engaging my children with paper and colors has saved me numerous times. It’s a quiet activity for church or wedding service, to fill time in the waiting area of a doctor’s office or an afternoon of a rainy day. There have even been instances when I’ve handed them a post-it pad and pen just so I could finish a phone conversation. But I love the doodling activity beyond the captivation. I love the freedom that blank paper gives. And, while for the wee ones, masterpieces are probably not being made, the process of it all is wiring the brain for greater things to come. That brain stuff gets me so excited!

The issue that I run into is managing all the paper. A neat stack of paper soon becomes disordered and, it’s happened before, someone takes it upon themselves to ‘make it rain’ paper. But I have a way to keep things orderly and it’s very, very easy.

This book-built-to-fall-apart has so many good parts. Pages can easily be removed and replaced whenever it’s needed using the same elastic and stick. It’s a paper pad that has no end! It lays flat which, as a doodler myself, is ideal. It doesn’t need to be fancy or decorated and the paper stays where it should.

Here’s how to make one.


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Supplies:

-paper, any color or kind works, even scrap paper with a print can be folded with the blank side out
-hole punch – hand punches work just as well, I just used the big dog
-dowel, skewer or branch – needs to be about 2″ longer than the width of the top and bottom holes
-piece of elastic cord (the two edges tied together to make a loop) or rubber band – the stretchy piece needs to be long enough to stretch between the top and bottom holes

First, fold all the ‘pages’ paper in half. Any size works and you can even mix together different lengths and widths.

Use the hole punch to punch each piece of paper on the non-folded edge. The paper can be punched on the folded edge but doing it as I described will make for sturdier, two layered pages and hide one-side printed paper.

When all the paper is punched, make a nice, well stacked pile. Pinch the looped elastic (or rubber band) and thread it through the top hole.

Through the loop, put the dowel.

Then stretch the rubber band or elastic, pinching it again to make another loop, and thread it through the bottom hole.

It might take some finagling but put the other end of the dowel through the loop. The elastic will keep the pages and dowel in place.