Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Book Hospital FREEBIE

Every library needs a hospital...a place where broken and damaged books can go to heal.  

This is our book hospital:  

 When books look like this...
 ...they go to the book hospital.  
This book hospital has saved me a lot of interruptions when my kiddos are reading my older books and they fall apart during Daily Five.  We review how to treat a book carefully, but I know some of my books are hand me downs and are not in the best of shape anymore.  When they need a little surgery they have to go to the hospital.  

This hospital saves me from being interrupted over and over again while I'm working with my reading groups...and my kids think it's funny when I say my old books need a little surgery and some stitches.  :)

Our librarian has been wonderful at helping me repair some of my books.  I'm hoping they make it to the end of the year and then I'll send them home with my kids for the summer and replace them.  If some of my books can make it to May I'll be very happy.  

Here is what the rest of my book baskets look like in my class library.  I purposefully made my book hospital a different color so that my kiddos could find it easily.  

I originally got this idea from Pinterest (where else?!) and before that it came from the 2 Sisters of Daily Five.  
Book Hospital. Definitely need one of these!

Here is my book hospital freebie:
Hope your library can benefit from a book hospital! :)

4 comments:

Haley said...

I'm going to fail Teacher 101 for asking this question. I have tried a Book Hospital, but I realize I am not a book doctor! Haha! I seriously have the hardest time fixing the books! I have tried stapling on a weird diagonal (the books are wider than my stapler) and packing tape, but it looks like a HOTE MESS!! any tips?!?! :)

Rachel Seymour said...

Haley- I don't think you're going to fail Teacher 101!! :) My librarian has a really long stapler so she can staple the center of any size book I have. She then covers the binding with clear packaging tape to hold it all together. So far this has worked. Like I said the stitched up books won't last forever, but I might at least get a couple more months out of them. I staple the smaller books myself that will fit in my smaller stapler. If the books are beyond repairing, it might be better to just invest in a new book! :)

Rachel

Miss DeCarbo said...

Oh.My.Goodness. How have I not thought of this or seen this in your room before?! What an awesome idea. Right now, my "sick" books are thrown into an empty mailbox cubby haha! Sometimes I even tell the kids "just pretend it's not falling apart and keep the page in there." Haha well THAT doesn't work as you can imagine! Thanks so much for a great idea! :)

Sugar and Spice

Tammy said...

My book hospital comes in very handy too. I like that the kids want to take care of our books!
❀ Tammy
Forever in First

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