101 Book Activities Kids Love

As I look back on the teachers I had in elementary school, I wonder if their jobs were as difficult as ours are, today. Why was I thinking about this? I guess it's because this time of year, teachers are scrambling to find the best of the best for our students. We stay awake nights wondering if the lessons are creative, exciting and encourage a true love of learning. We remind each other of the great sales where we can find free or inexpensive supplies for our classrooms. It's also the time of year when we're looking for new clothing for the new school year.

Tonight, I was thinking about book reports in particular. When I was in school, we were told to read a book and do a report about it. I blogged about this on an earlier post so as you can see, this topic really intrigues me.

We had a school librarian who was a volunteer, not a paid employee. She was a kind, sweet woman who worked her tail off to make sure the books were always in the correct Dewey Decimal section and displayed at kids' eye levels. 

That kind woman was my mother who was set up the entire library when I was in kindergarten. The school was new and had no library, so mom devoted her entire summer to setting it up for us. 

A vivid recollection was the metal stamp she used to stamp the date the book was due, on the card in the front cover. It made sort of a CLICK/THUMP sound and I always noticed she had ink stains all over her fingers from stamping hundreds of books kids were taking out of her library. 

Years later when I began teaching, we had "ditto" machines, that had purplish, permanent ink Get it on your hands, and the stains wouldn't come off for days. Get it on a shirt and it wouldn't wash away.  Don't take a swipe at your nose if you have an itch or you'll have a bloomin' purple nose the rest of the week. 

I'll never forget the time I stopped at a toll booth driving home from school one day, and there was a cute guy collecting toll money. I handed him my money and he said "So you're a teacher uh?" I looked at his big grin and said, "How do you know that?" 

 I'll never forget his next words..... "Because you have DITTO MACHINE INK on your HAND"  Talk about being embarrassed.. I must have scrubbed my hands for two hours when I got home. Did the stain disappear? NO.. :)

Getting back on topic.. When I became a teacher I swore I'd give my students choices of what kinds of book reports they'd do. This is the list I came up with and honestly, I'm still jotting down ideas.

Download this FREE packet of 101 book report ideas to the book report folder on your computer for easy access and just be glad it wasn't created on a ditto machine or your hands might have turned purple. :)