I didn't need a library system on the house, yet I wanted our books to go along with school... KINDA..
FIRST: I went to the local Wal-Mart and bought some Avery labels... I bought a few packages because well, we had a good chunk of books..
SECOND: I got scotch tape, but you can use clear label type tape or something too.
THIRD: I had the kids help me pull ALL our books and put them on the table
FOURTH: I made piles of new books...
Pile One: Any book that was science related
Pile Two: Any book History related (even Biographies)
Pile Three: Books about Geography
Pile Four: Books about music
Pile Five: Bible related books
Pile Six: Books that build character, manners and such
Pile Seven: EVERYTHING ELSE
FIFTH: Look at Piles, my Pile 7 was HUGE, so this became my PINK STICKERS!
I figured History and Geography go hand in hand so that became YELLOW!
Science reminds me of growing, green is a grow color.. so yep they are GREEN!
I tossed Music, Bible and Character all into ORANGE
SIXTH: Let the fun begin!!! more organizing
SEVENTH: ORANGE --> letters --> B = Bible
C = Character Building
M = Music
take each pile, write the letter with a permanent marker (skinny point) or pen and stick to binding of book... Have a helper (husband's are good at this) to add tape over the sticker, give to next helper (kids are good) and stick on shelf for ORANGE BOOKS!
EIGHTH: YELLOW --) letters --> H = History
G = Geography
GH = those books that put history and geo together
(follow above steps)
NINTH: you got it.. It's GREEN time..
now we use APOLOGIA science... so I went with that for my labels.. examples:
Z = zoology
A = astronomy
B = botany
HA = human anatomy
R= resource type books
W = weather, nature books
If we couldn't fit one of those.. I left it blank...
TENTH: Okay, take a deep breath... blow it out.. and don't do this pile today... LOL.. (assuming you just sat down like me and did the other 3 in one day).. take a mental break.. grab some coffee, chocolate or whatever.. and then sit down to this huge pile if your like me anyways.. This is probably 1/2 of your books stash..
Here is what I did...
Make more PILEs!!!
(can you tell that organizing within the organization is like fun to me.. )
So here's my piles:
Books I figure our great LITERATURE
Fun EVERYDAY reading or EASY reading
FICTION
Books that are a SERIES
POETRY
ALPHABET BOOKS
Now I am still fine working this pink tabs... For me the Fiction and Everyday Easy Readers was my harder part... what I SHOULD HAVE done (and may do sometime) is make a FUN/FICTION pile and EARLY/EASY reading pile..
This gave me letters: L = Literature
E = Early Reading (Picture books - 2nd grade level)]
F = books for Fun and Fiction
S = series
A= alphabet
Now my bookshelves look like this: Now I wish I had better bookshelves.. but I don't.. so for now this must work for us.. several smaller areas we put books.. but it helps my brain work better.. and when we want a book about.... We know where to start... so much easier to find books for school too!
