How to Make a Biome Booklet

Make a biome booklet a variety of ways once you have found information about six or more of the world's biomes. Create a traditional, high-tech, accordion folded or antique looking book in which to display your knowledge of the world's biomes. All methods provide a booklet cover, table of contents and room for both illustrations and text. Use your creativity to enhance further any of the booklets and use beyond the biome booklet for many craft, school or personal uses.

Things You'll Need

• Information regarding desert, tundra, forest, grassland, freshwater and marine biomes Card stock or cardboard Fabric and fabric markers, if desired Computer paper for book pages Binding material such as stapler, hole punch and string or ribbon, embroidery needle and thread, plastic comb binding, brads Large rectangular construction-type paper Paper bag

Instructions

1. Many biomes exist on Earth. Create a booklet about the desert, tundra, forest, grassland, freshwater and marine biomes. Some lists break down the biomes further, listing more than just six biomes. Before making your book, be sure of your requirements and research the needed information. For instance, you may need to break down the forest biome into coniferous, temperate and rainforests in your book. If so, simply add more pages or provide information that breaks down the biomes within the biome on that page.

2. Create a title for the cover of your booklet as well as an illustration and, of course, include your name as the author. Inside the booklet, provide a short table of contents listing the biomes you cover in your booklet. You may want to write a short description or introduction of your booklet as well. On each page, draw or otherwise provide a picture and text describing that biome. Provide the location, a description of the plant and animal life, natural resources, climate information and any other interesting facts for that biome.

3. Create a traditional biome booklet with an inside page for each biome and your table of contents. Draw pictures and write text for each biome on white computer or scrapbook paper. Pictures and text may be hand rendered or computer generated. When finished, create a cover on card stock or cardboard. Cover the card stock or cardboard with fabric and glue it in place. Paint the title, illustration and author on it with fabric markers. Alternatively, create the title, picture and author directly on the cardboard or on paper, and then attach it to the cardboard or card stock with glue. Bind the book with a heavy-duty stapler, plastic comb binding, hole punch and ribbon or yarn, brads, or by sewing the binding with embroidery needle and thread.

4. Create the entire booklet on a computer with any word processing program. Create the cover, table of contents and biome pages, then print them out. Print the cover on card stock and the pages on regular paper. Bind them in the same ways as stated in Step 3. Alternatively, create your biome booklet in a slide show program. Print the slides and bind them together as a book.

5. Create an accordion-style biome booklet for six biomes with a long, thin, rectangular piece of construction or similar paper. Begin by creating even sections for the pages of your accordion book. Fold the rectangle in half along the short edge. Leave folded and repeat twice more so that you have folded it in half three times. Open the strip of paper and find eight even sections. Now refold the paper along the fold lines you just made, but fold the paper back and forth as if making a fan ... fold first one direction and then the other. Remember to fold along the exact lines you just created so that you maintain the eight even sections. Place card stock or cardboard cut to the size of the folded pages on the first and last pages of the folded accordion book to create the front and back covers. Create the cover and pages as described above but on the pages of the accordion book. Use only the front of the entire piece of paper. View it as a stand-up presentation or open it and read it like a traditional book.

6. Create a mini book with a bark-look cover using two 8-by-10-inch pieces of white computer paper and one 8-by-10-inch piece of a brown paper bag. Crumple the computer paper and piece of paper bag several times carefully so that they look old, then open them up. Dip the two pieces of computer paper in cool tea or coffee for a minute, then put them aside to dry flat. First, fold the 8-by-10-inch piece of paper bag in half. Create your biome book cover on the front of this folded piece. After pages dipped in coffee or tea dry, hold them together and fold your now antique-looking pages in half along the short edge. These go inside the cover created by the paper bag piece. Punch two holes along the edge and tie the book together with rustic-looking string or raffia. On the first page you see when opening the paper bag cover, create the table of contents. Create your biome booklet pages on the antiqued-looking white pages inside.