My Bright Idea this month is actually a re-run from a couple of years ago.It’s a quick and easy way I make class books from writing we’ve done so that I can put them out for Open House AND send the pages home later without destroying their work nor having to recreate the book cover and combing each year. Since our Open House is right around the corner – it’s on my mind. 🙂

Do you make class books?

These are a bunch of WONDERFUL papers the kids wrote about their good friend… an activity we do based on Rainbow Fish. It includes a little water color fish art with a glittery, shimmery scale.

This is the cover

 

It’s bound with a comb binder. I place 30 pieces of construction paper (1 for each student) cut to size between the front and back cover then I comb bound all of those sheets along with the covers.

This is now my permanent book. It is reused each year.

Each year I pull this out of the cabinet.  To assemble the book I simply run a glue stick across the length of each piece of construction (Use the crappy glue sticks for this part because you don’t want the pages glued down permanently. You don’t need a lot of glue.)

Then set the students’ written work on it. Repeat 30 times or whatever amount you need for your class size.

I love that Alexis wrote that she has “nice conversations” with Emily. How sweet is that?

Seriously peeps, I am all about saving time and energy. Since this is a topic I have the kids write about each year, it only makes sense to re-use the cover and binding. This is so easy, I have even had students put it together for me!

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