Have you ever gotten an idea in the middle of the night and just had to get up and go work on it?  That’s what happened to me a few weeks ago, about book care nonetheless!  I was dreaming and came up with what I think will be a really fun idea. I’m really excited about it, and can’t wait to use it with my first graders next year!

Here’s the idea:

     When I teach book care, I try to use a different book with Kinder, 1st grade and 2nd grade so that they don’t have to hear the same book read again each year.   I like to read Chester Visits the Library by Dennis Fertig to first grade.  Afterwards I like to leave out the other two books that are in the Chester series that I purchased from Scholastic, and the kids love to read them.

     After the book, we would do a review activity to remind them how to take care of their library books.  This year, many of my 1st graders remembered doing this review activity with me when they were in Kindergarten, so I’ve been trying to think of something different to do with them next year. 

      

     So there I am sleeping, when suddenly I see my students making their own class book to show Chester that they know the right way to treat library books!  I immediately woke up and starting creating the pages for the book care book before my muse left me!  

     To start out, I would print out the front and back cover (shown below) in color on cardstock and laminate it after we filled in their class name.

     Then I would hand out the pages to the students and we would read them together out loud and they would tell me “Yes, Chester WOULD want me to do that!” or “No, Chester would NOT want me to do that.”  Then I would have them illustrate what the page was saying.  (There are 10 pages total with situations already typed on them for a total of 20 scenarios that the students could illustrate.)

     I also included some blank pages where they could come up with their own examples. You could also use these in case you had more than 20 students in a class.

     After the students illustrated their book care pages, we could staple them into their cover and they would be able to take it back to their classroom to share with their teacher.  I also included a cut and paste activity for them to show what they learned, and then they could take that home to share with their parents.

I can’t wait to try this out next year!  If you are interested in trying this activity out with your students, you can find it here at my TpT store .  Let me know what you think!

Sandy