I hate notebooks.
There, I said it.
I know I can't be the only one who feels this way. Notebooks with coils usually end up tangled and pulled out until half the pages are loose, or the metal is used as a weapon. Notebooks where the pages can be torn out usually end up with the pages falling out. It's horrible. Composition notebooks are great, but they are more expensive than regular notebooks and therefore just not in my budget!
I've battled this problem because I always use notebooks with my students. I felt like I spent too much time fixing notebook coils when some student decided to shove their pencil up in the coils even after I told them it was a "no no".
Even after setting down ground rules, including don't put your pencils in your notebook coils, your coils aren't toys, and other such completely worthless directions, I had to come up with a solution. And finally, one day, I did!
These are actual student notebooks. The plastic coils are even worse than the metal ones.
The students even had difficulty opening to the correct page because the coils were in the way.
All you need to fix this problem? 2 plastic beads and a hot glue gun!
One bag of beads will do multiple notebooks and they are cheap!
You can do it two ways, but I found it easier to put the hot glue inside the bead and slide it onto the coil. I put one bead on each end of the notebook.
Voila!
Even with Kindergarten students using these notebooks, the coils stayed put. It only took about 15 minutes of my time to do an entire class set, and they would keep the coils from falling out. I just told my students they were not allowed to pull them off, and miraculously, they didn't!
And that, my friends, is how you get closure on those loose notebook coils!
I hope this was a helpful tip!
