It’s Monday! Week two at my summer job at a daycare is underway. I can’t really complain because it’s good money and and it’s an easy job. And I can practice new teaching ideas on the kids! Oh, and I do get paid to go to the pool! Just sayin….
I was reading about books and libraries and organizing books on Growing Kinders and just had to join in. Here’s why: besides my Post It Note fetish, I have an insatiable love of books. I have over 10,000 books in my classroom library (including 20 banker boxes of chapter books from my days in 2nd grade). Seriously, I started buying books in college and never stopped. Yard sales, Scholastic, McKay’s, Half Price books. Everywhere I go I buy books. I even had custom made bookshelves made for my room (for only $8 thanks to an amazing local non-profit that uses high school students to build furniture for local schools!) With that many books, I have to keep them organized. And after years of trying to figure it out, I finally have a system that works AMAZINGLY well.
It’s as simple as 1, 2, 3. No, really. My books are sorted by topic/genre/authors and then they are numbered. I use a number system to organize all of my books. I have every box labeled and numbered starting at 1. The boxes are simply numbered in order all the way through 40 (for now!). Every book has a sticker on the front with the number for it’s box. All books with the number 1 go in box 1 and so on! EASY BREEZY!
I use the color coded circles from Staples and write the number with a sharpie. It’s a really simple system and as an added bonus, it helps students with number ID! I am going to attach a couple of pictures even though they aren’t the best. Sorry they aren’t better but banished not allowed in our rooms until mid July!
A couple of little tidbits about my system:
1. The beginning of the year is when I have to be more responsible for putting the books away because, of course, we haven’t learned all of our numbers. As the year progresses, they take much more responsibility for keeping the books organized.
2. The Book Hospital! We have an orange milk crate (NO CLUE where the orange milk crate came from!) that we use as our book hospital. This serves two purposes: it’s where books go that are damaged so the book doctor (ME!) can fix them them. And it’s where books go when they don’t have a number sticker. I try to check the hospital at least weekly to keep our books available to read.
3. There is a great app for your phone, I Pad and computer that you can use to scan the bar codes and you can keep track of your books. I just recently started using it and highly recommend it! Check out this site: Classroom Organizer!
4. As soon as new books arrive they get a stamp with my name on the inside cover, a sticker on the front and the appropriate number.
The green blog would my students and the visitor is a local news reporter who came to read to us! You can get an idea of how my library looks!
I’m attaching the labels I made for the book boxes last year and the new ones I might use this year to coordinate with my monster theme. They are in PowerPoint and Publication format so I hope someone can use them! Someday I hope to be able to afford cool, matching boxes!