Over the last two weeks, I’ve written about Preserving Baby Things in Photographs (Part 1 Clothes, and Part 2 Toys). So, what do you do with the photographs once you’re done, other than putting them in an album or blogging about them? Here’s a neat project, combining these photographs into a personalized learning book for your baby or child.

Photographs can be a great way to help teach colors to babies. Grouping objects of similar colors can easily help littles to learn. What makes it fun is that these objects are already favorites in your family. Groupings of shapes such as circles and squares or body parts such as noses and toes will also make fun learning tools.
To make this project even more interesting, add text with the name of the color or the shape to the photograph using tools such as Photoshop or even the paint program on your PC.

With the Flickr Mosaic Maker at Flagrant Disregard, it’s easy to combine these images into one shot. Then you can either have a photo print made through Flickr or use your own home printer. An inexpensive plastic page sleeve can keep the print from getting squashed. If you have a laminator, this would be a perfect use for it. Combine a bunch of sleeves together into a book, and you get an inexpensive, personalized teaching tool for your baby.

Another fun idea I had was to document baby’s first words by taking pictures of the words they speak. It would help babies to remember the words they’ve already spoken while creating a great memory book for you. Da Da will be first picture for Chloe’s book, followed by Cat, Auntee, and Turkey (ha). Someday, she’ll get to Mama - I’m still waiting!