How To Make Your Own Experience Books

Think about how you told a friend about a recent trip you took or event you attended. You were able to share your experience, tell a story, and bond with someone you care about. These types of conversations are key in how we connect with others.

For little ones, especially children who are deaf or hard of hearing, learning how to share their experiences requires some practice. They’ll need to learn skills like knowing what information the listener needs, what order to provide the information, how much detail to include, and how the listener will relate to the story.

Early learning research has reinforced that sharing books and reading aloud will help children in language and literacy development. Research has also emphasized that oral narrative development, which is the ability to tell about yourself and your experiences descriptively, requires meaningful conversation practice. Experience books are a great way to help your child become a confident conversationalist!

What is an Experience Book?

These homemade books are put together by you and your child to capture what’s happened in their life. These books feature your child as the main character to help them relate their experiences after the event has occurred, like a trip to the zoo or a daily routine such as getting ready for bed. Children and parents in LSL intervention are often asked to create experience books at home and share them in the intervention session for practice toward their LSL goals.

How Do You Make an Experience Book?

Experience books can be as simple as paper folded into a book, photographs collected and attached with ring binder clips or placed in a photo album, or objects placed in a baggie and taped to a page. Books can be drawn by pencil or crayon, or favorite objects can be glued or stapled on the pages. Some parents enjoy using digital apps to create books and stories from images they take on their phone. 

Whatever the format, the act of creating the book together, dictating and writing the words and phrases associated with the action then retelling the story multiple times will help your child gain the oral language practice needed to develop communication competence.

Getting Started

As you gather materials to make the book, use familiar commands to guide your child to find the items around the house. Let your child “Hear It Before They See It” (also known as audition first). Guide your child to follow instructions to create the book, or ask a question about what step should be next. Then pause and wait for a response.

Creating the Book

With Your Younger Child:

• Set the stage by reminding your child about the experience you’re using for the book. (Ex: Let’s talk about our trip to the grocery store!)
• Give the child prompts to decide what pictures should be included in the book. Provide choices to help them decide and then draw what they say. (Ex: What was your favorite thing we bought at the store? Was it apples or bananas?)
• Use “Beyond the Here and Now” strategy to expand on what your child says and help them use phrases to describe their actions. (Ex: If your child says, “Apple” then you expand what they say “Oh yes, you love apples! Apples are a yummy snack.”)
• Use open questions for more spontaneous descriptions. (Ex: How do you think the apple tastes?)
• Write the words that your child says on each page.
• Help them to draw pictures or use stickers. Ask your child to find images to go with the words. Guide your child to color or glue the photo to the page.

With Your Older Child:

• Encourage your child to tell you about the event.
• Then you can ask them to retell the story starting with the first thing that happened. Talk about the beginning of the story.
• Use keywords such as where, what, who, and how to prompt your child to tell more about the event.
• Guide your child to draw their own images and talk about their drawings by describing the objects and actions.
• Use “Beyond the Here and Now” strategy to expand your child’s words and encourage longer, more complex sentences. Then help your child practice by writing the sentence on the page.
• Add to the story by identifying emotions, talking about their feelings, and drawing the faces to match the feelings.
• Ask open questions that prompt your child to think about their next experience. (Ex: What should we do next time? Let’s start our list.)

Practice, Practice, Practice!

Throughout the week, find more times for your child to share their experience book. First, allow your child to lead the conversation. Then, use LSL strategies like “Beyond the Here and Now” to expand and extend their words. Use open questions and “I wonder...” statements to help your child recall the events and retell the story.

Schedule a time for your child to share the book with extended family, friends or siblings as a way to practice sharing with a variety of listeners. Each listener will relate to the story in a different way, ask different questions, and share their own similar experiences. Try doing a video call with family or friends who aren’t nearby and have your child share the book as part of the conversation.