Book Care Seesaw Activity

At the start of a new school year librarian's always teach their students how to properly care for their books. For our younger students this may be the first time they have intentionally thought about book care and for the older students these lessons may just be a quick reminder.

With all my students I start off by reading A Perfectly Messed Up Story by Patrick McDonnell. This is the perfect book to get them thinking about all the things we shouldn't do with our books! It's especially exciting to see the little four and five year olds raise their hands and say (before we even begin our discussion), "but Ms. K! It's not okay to color in our books!"

After reading through the book, I initiate a discussion with the kids where we list the different things that happened to the book in the story and what we can do to make sure they don't happen to our own books.

The following lesson I assign the following Seesaw activity, where students match the images to what we should and should not have or do with our library books. This is a quick activity designed for KG, 1st, and 2nd graders and allows me to use the responses as a formative assessment to check their understanding.