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! 

Free Oviparous Animal "Report" Template

Hi everyone! Still on a roll doing my lesson plans! I now have another thing to share if you're interested. This is for kids to do a small "report" on oviparous animals. Its really a blank concept map. They fill in the bubbles with the information about the animal they choose, including drawing a picture of the animal and its' egg. This can be good as a complete assignment for students who don't have strong writing skills, since they only have to write a few words or a sentence in each bubble. It can also work as a graphic organizer for information that students can later turn into a short report.
If you want, pick it up through Google docs!
Okay. Now back to the old drawing board for me! 

Free Bunny Writing Promt

Hi everyone! Still working on my lesson plans! Today I wanted to share a bunny writing prompt. It begins with, "One day I woke up, and noticed I'd turned into a bunny!" Students then write a short story about what happened. Once they've finished writing, there is also a bunny picture for them to color, making this assignment worthy of hanging on the wall or including in a portfolio! 

I've also included a "cloze" version, which you may choose to use with younger students or students with cognitive impairments. I'm going to use it with Starling, Triller, and possibly Rosella. The cloze version has a short story already written, but includes blank spaces for students to personalize the story. It reads, "One day I woke up an saw that I'd turned into a bunny! I felt _________. I said, '______________.' The first thing I did was ____________. Then I went to ________. I saw _________. I ate __________. When I turned back into a kid, I felt ________." It also includes the bunny picture for them to color.


I've uploaded it at 4shared.com. I used a special font that allows you to make your own lined paper. I embedded the font, so it should reach you the way I intended it to. If not, you may have to fix some things so that it looks right with your own fonts. 


I hope you like it! Later in the week, I'm sure I'll add some more freebies!

Free Bunny Glyph For Kids

Hi everyone! Today is the first actual day of my spring break, and so far I've spent almost all of it working on lesson plans. (I did take a break to watch SVU while I ate my lunch, I took my dogs into the backyard for a while, and I had to clean up after one of my dogs who has diarrhea and had accidents on the floor a few times.) 


I wanted to share one of the products of my genius with you. Next week we're going to be doing Easter activities. (We have to keep them secular, and concentrate on bunnies and things like that more than on the actual holiday.) One of the things I've created is a bunny coloring glyph.


I got the coloring page from a different website. I can't share the picture here, because of copyrighting, but I can share the link with you so you can go get it yourself! Here is the coloring page. 


The directions and key for the glyph are on a Google doc, here. 


You could either make one copy of the directions and read each direction aloud to the class, so that everyone works on it at the same time (which is good for kids who don't have strong reading skills or who need to work on following verbal directions) or you could give each student a copy of the directions and let them work at their own pace (good for kids with stronger reading skills or kids who need to practice following written directions.) Or, do both! Afterwards, staple a copy of the key to the bottom of each student's coloring page, and hang them up for all to see.


By the way, if you use this glyph with your class, you may have to change the numbers in the first direction. The kids in my class are 9, 10 and 11 years old, so those are the choices I used. You can change them to the ages of the students in your class, of course. 


I hope you like this! I love glyphs!