Book Baby Library Book Care Lessons

Are you teaching your students library book care lessons? Some of our students have never experienced a library outside of school. We need to teach them everything they need to know about caring for their library books, including how to treat them and where to keep them.

I’ve got a brand new way to talk to our youngest students about book care, and we’re loving it! Meet my book baby!

Library Book Care Lesson Supplies

It’s cheap and easy to create your very own book baby. I wrapped up my read-aloud in a baby blanket from the Dollar Tree. You might have a nicer baby blanket at your house, but this one did the trick.

I also made a poster, a song, and a game. The poster of the song stayed up all year and we sang it together often.

I know we need to teach our students about taking care of their library books, but I don’t like to scold or nag them. I want to make this lesson fun AND memorable. I like to sing songs and play games and laugh as we learn.

I put all of my Book Baby activities together into a printable in my TPT store. It includes the Book Baby song, to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It,” but with gentle pats instead of claps. I also include the Book Baby game, where you flip the pages and ask students  questions, like “do I leave my book baby outside?” The students answer “yes” or “no.” I also have bookmarks that I send home in the student library books.

I’ll go back and review this all year long with pre-K, kindergarten and first grade. As they line up to go back to class, I’ll remind them, “hug your library book like a baby!” We can sing our song any time we need a little refresher during the school year. For preK and kindergarten, we sing the book baby song every single week. The students love the familiar routine, and I love that they enjoy reviewing book care with this strategy!

I put my book pages into a presentation book from Staples, like this.

It has 12 page protectors bound into it. So I can store it on my office bookshelf, like a book, and take it out whenever we need a review! If the papers were in a file folder, I might put them in the file cabinet and forget about them. It’s highly likely, in fact.

It’s so important to teach our students how to take care of their library books. For many of our students, this lesson is not taught at home or in the classroom. I never want our students to miss a checkout because of a lost or damaged book. I’m so glad that I finally found a friendly way to teach this skill!