Since lockdown began in March it has been increasing difficult to keep the kids entertained, especially as in our house we also like to make sure they are doing something with some educational value. Fortunately, we love reading and our house is packed with books and reading has been a great way to pass the time, on good days the kids love taking a book out into the garden. With our love of books the kids were delighted to receive Bookeez from John Adams – their very own book making studio.
Bookeez allows you to create your own story books, scripts, journals and much more! Not only is this an excellent creative activity but encourages reading, writing, imagination and storytelling. Aimed at children 7 years and upwards, the 8 and 11 year olds in our house couldn’t wait to get started (the elder loves typing stories on the laptop).
This set allows you to create, and recreate, 3 books for the budding authors in the household.
The contents of the box are:
- Bookeez Studio
- 3x Book Spines
- 6x Protective Corners
- 2x Sticker Sheets
- 40x pages
- 6x Pre-punched Covers
So what is Bookeez? Bookeez allows children to write, draw and create their own little stories and bind them into a book with a hard plastic spine and corner protectors. You can use the Bookeez Studio to decorate, stamp and stencil designs onto the pages and cover to make the book unique to you. There are enough spines and corners to create 3 books and they can even be taken apart and reused to create more books.
The Bookeez Studio also doubles as a storage box with all the component pieces neatly stored inside and within its design it features a hole punch, ruler and stencils giving children nearly everything that they need to create their own personalised books – all they need to supply themselves is a pen or pencil, creativity and imagination.
So what did the kids think about it? They absolutely loved it. They both love being creative and this kit focused their attention on writing and putting together their own little stories. It is very easy to use and the different paper (some lined, some with frames for pictures and some blank) helped them with some form of structure (we even have one book with a photo glued in rather than hand drawn). And it is virtually mess free.
Once their stories were created, turning them into a bound book is easy. If the pages already have pre-punched holes you just thread the spine straps though the holes and bind it all together. If the pages have no holes, you place them all on the Bookeez Studio box, line them up with the grooves and push down on the pink top to punch holes in the paper and then thread them onto the spine. Depending on the number of pages being used the kids might need some help as the more pages that need punching the more strength is required. Once the pages are threaded to the spine, just add the two protective corner covers.
Overall, this is an excellent craft kit that will help children with creativity, storytelling and literacy skills.
Since lockdown began and having so much time off school their handwriting has suffered as they have been using much more online learning resources rather than pen, paper and textbooks. This kit allowed them to get writing, use their imaginations and get that all-important handwriting practice without even realising it. As well as getting their brains working on being creative, their imaginations going into overdrive and practising their best handwriting it also gets them reading more.
The kit comes with 3 spines and 40 pages to create 3 books but when they ran out of paper or wanted longer books we were able to cut paper to size and use the hole punch in the Bookeez Studio to get more paper to fit (you can buy refill kits direct from John Adams for £3.99 including postage which gives 2 more spines, corners and 20 more pages).
Bookeez is an excellent, good quality tool to encourage creativity, imagination, handwriting and reading with a finished book at the end and who knows, maybe it will produce a future bestselling author?
Rating: 5/5
RRP: £15.99
For more information, visit www.johnadams.co.uk. Available to buy from here.