I am getting in a lot of my new books for this next school year. Last year I was using P 4/5 from Sonlight and it came with colored stickers to put on each book and label it for each subject ie. History/Geography, Read Alouds, Science, etc. I am using Module 1 and 106 Days this year with my 1st grader. Do any of you label your books in a similar manner to keep track of which year(s) you use them for, or which module, etc.? Any ideas would be appreciated. I am such an organization nut. I want to be all labeled and ready come July!
I keep the books for each module in big bins/containers/plastic tubs in our basement. Then when we’re ready to start that module, I bring up its bin and swap out the books on the shelf, putting away the module that we just finished and setting out the next module’s books.
I use stickers, of course I also stole the idea from Sonlight. I purchased garage sale stickers from Wal Mart then:
sorted my books out according to the years listed on the modules (had to look up a lot of them), put the year it represented and the grade level on the sticker and then put the sticker on the spine.
I then grouped the books on my bookshelf according to the modules. I ran out of sticker choices so, Ancient Egypt is a yellow sticker with a large dot above the year, Ancient Greece is a green sticker with a dot, Ancient Rome is pink with a dot…middle ages module is a green sticker, early history is an orange sticker and modern history is pink. I have a 5 shelf bookcase and, starting with the top shelf, I just shelved the books according to the years. (makes sense?).
On another 5-shelf bookcase I have the science books on one shelf, all science equipment on two shelves, personal development books/mission books and bible literature (Adam and His Kin, etc).
A third bookshelf houses all of our literature/free reading books (not in any particular order).
Two bookshelves house all of my books (I’m a book freak, can you tell?)
The 6th bookshelf my kids each have their own shelf that houses their notebooks, math, the books they may be reading, etc.
This may seem like a lot of work but I jumped into the CM scene when my older kids were in junior high and high school so they all ended up on different history rotations just so they could get them all in and it was a hassle looking for books. Now, I have my oldest two children on different rotations but this upcoming year I will be able to put my youngest 3 on the same history rotation level. Doing this has just made it easier to be able look for the resources that I need rather than scramble around.
Thanks to you both for your ideas. I think that I would prefer to have the books out all the time on shelves. I guess I am unreallistically thinking that books would be “looked at” even if they weren’t scheduled. My ds5 likes to pull books off the shelf all day long and look at them. Hmmm, maybe I will just stick with the colored stickers idea. Anybody else have ideas for organizing your books?