Some Treats For Your Classroom Library!

Hi everyone, here I am again! One of my favorite things I've been doing to get ready for teaching has been working on my classroom library. I now own hundreds of children's books, and hope to acquire hundreds more over the summer. I want the children to read, and even borrow, these books... but I also want to be sure that they stay mine, and go with me wherever I end up going in the future. After all, I put a lot of work into building my library! 


I started thinking about getting some bookplates for my books. When I was a kid I used to have stickers that I put inside my books, and wrote my name in the blank part. However, these are hard to find now, and I am not sure I want to spend that much money for all of my books!


So, I've been working on finding free, printable bookplates. You can either print these out on sticky paper, or do what I'm going to do and just cut them out and paste them into books. This way, I figure I can print out lots of different bookplates, maybe even a unique one for each book! 


There are tons of sites with free bookplates out there. Feel free to do a search on your own, if you don't like any of these... I'm listing my favorites! :)



You guys all know Jan Brett, right? Well, she has free bookplates on her site!  


OMG, the PIGEON has a bookplate! You know which pigeon I'm talking about, right? The hotdog loving, bus riding, puppy wanting one?



Here are some customizable bookplates. You download them as a Word or OpenOffice document, and then go in and put your own (or somebody's) name in there. Pretty cool, right?


Cute bookplates made by a blogger at UrbanNest. My favorite is the owl one! 


Four cute little animal labels. Can be for books, cubbies, or anything else!


More cute little animal bookplates. Love 'em!


Nice owl bookplates. You like owls, right? 


Some lovely, inspirational bookplates. The quotes may go right over the kids' heads. Or might not. Either way, they're beautiful! 


MrPrintables.com has four sets of adorable bookplates! Two have different zoo animal themes, one has cats, and one has balloons.


Babyology.com/au has these sweet cartoon animal bookplates. Can you tell I love animal themes?


Myhomelibrary.org has loads of different printable bookplates. Most of them say, "From the home library of," which sounds sort of weird in a classroom, but its workable, right?


Aww, cute little bluebird bookplates!


Disney offers Alice In Wonderland bookplates and also Mickey Mouse bookplates, and some unspecified character bookplates. 


 Four different colorful bookplates: A stack of books, an owl, a caterpillar, and some flowers!


BentleyBoutique.com offers some sports themed bookplates and back to school bookplates.


ActivityVillage.co.uk offers quite a variety of bookplates, from airplanes (which they call aeroplanes) to dancers to dinosaurs to monsters. 


Orangeyoulucky.blogspot.com has some goofy bookplates you'll love! Actually these aren't specifically for books... you could use them for anything! 


Ziggityzoom.com has a few printable bookplates. There is also one for your lunch. They also have these printable labels that could be used for anything, including books. 


Here's a different one! If you ever like to give books to kids, as birthday or holiday presents... I know some teachers who do this... these bookplates allow you to write in the child's name and your name. So it would say, "This book belongs to Timmy, with love from Mrs. Jones."


Okay. Sorry this list isn't organized or anything. I'm really not too organized of a person. Also, one more tip... I read this one in Educating Esme. You may know this already. If you have lots of paperbacks in your children;s library, make the covers more durable by covering them with clear contact paper! I love the kind Wal-Mart sells because its so shiny, it looks like its actually laminated.


That's all, folks! Write back soon!