Books Galore

I heart books. I hope that my students will heart books too! My little obsession with offering a variety of reading materials has landed me with way too many books to mention. Having a plethora of books raises a very serious organization problem. Well, here are my ideas on that subject.

1. Have an amazing shelf that showcases the covers of the books you'd like your young ones to see. The cover is what entices the young reader, so entice them!


2. Separate the books into categories. After you've categorized them make labels to distinguish that the particular book is part of a certain category. This makes keeping the books organized much simpler and offers the children a system for browsing certain types of stories.


3. Label the book shelf with signs that correspond with the labels on the books.

4. If you have special and/or seasonal books that you only want available at certain times place those in bins. Mine are sorted according to months. For example, all of my leprechaun and Dr. Seuss books that I want to read are in my March bin. When March comes around I pull that bin of books down and read those books. This prevents the children from shouting out,"I already read this book", as well as protects those books from rapid handling decay.

Book Shelves a la First Grade

I believe that a child should be in love with reading from a young age. Well, when you were a little person, what enticed you to pick up a book? It was the cover of course! The problem is that most bookshelves are not designed with the young child's mind in mind, so most shelved showcase the bind of the book. Well, Mr. Phippen built me this first grade friendly book shelf. It is fashioned out of vinyl rain gutters found at Home Depot as well as a few sturdy 2 x 4's. It shows off the book covers and keeps my students going back for more. Maybe I can get Mr. Phippen to post a little tutorial on how to make this beauty!

Library Basket

The librarian at my school is one smart gal. She provides us with a basket to store the children's library books. The children check the books out then put them in the basket when they're finished with them. On library day I have 2 children carry the basket to the library. The librarian returns the basket that day and the cycle goes on. It's smart, isn't it?