Organizing Children's Books: Our Home Library

Finally, I can tell you that our home library is organized!!  This summer, my amazing aunt and uncle hauled a huge Expedit shelf from IKEA to my house.  When I say hauled, I mean from Arizona to the Mid-west.  So yes, hauled!!  I am forever grateful :).  This week, I finally got my rear in gear and got it to look the way I wanted.  

Here is it!  After purging two large boxes of books I was able to fit pretty much every book (not curriculum) that we own on the shelf. We have very few adult books since we use digital.  But, I feel that children need real books when they are young.  

I hemmed and hawed about how to arrange them.  Initially I thought about sorting by theme, but too many overlapped and I was stressed about whether I should put the book about sea creature with oceans or animals.  Then, I thought about by author-but only one of my children can read so I would be the only one putting them back.  Not cool.

So, I chose by color!!  I saw this once a long time ago and thought it was silly.  Now, I think it's genius, LOL!  I did pull out chapter books and put them in bins and some of the chapter books are in the drawers at the bottom.  They just aren't as pretty!

Our shelf tour starts at the top.  

Our globe pillow-it might get swapped out for a real globe.  But, I wanted one the kids could play with.

Camera bag that belonged to my great grandma.  It needs to be repaired so I can't use it for a formal bag.  BUT, it can be used for storage and makes me happy when I see it.

Our continent box.  This was going to go in the school room, but I thought it would be great to have it out with the books for my children to explore when they are reading.  It is slowly being filled with continent packets.  I'll show you them when it's finished.

The view from below.

Little pom poms with magnets for magnet pages which will be in the drawers at the bottom.

On the left is a set of rug checkers.

Some of the checkers are on another shelf.  I like the way they look!

A super cool marble mind game for kids.

One of our favorite games, Flea Circus.  The bin holds our Happy Hollister books-LOVE!  Our poetry books are here, too.  One of the few things that didn't get put into the rainbow.  The last package on the right is a book and puppet set.

Books are held in front by plate holders. I chose our brand new book, There Was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly to make sure the kids saw it right away.

In our Classical Conversations timeline, Egyptians are mentioned.  I thought that my children would enjoy reading about something they had heard about.  It's a cute story!

In honor of the Presidential debates, I brought out Arthur Meets the President

and Duck for President. 

I will change the books out as I see they have been read or want to bring attention to others.  Mustang has already switched them out for ones she is reading or wants to read-specifically all four slots are each holding one of the Happy Hollister books.  I had wanted to put the books lower but Explorer kept pulling them off the shelf and the plate holders aren't that durable!

 The bins below hold a few games, chapter books, and some art supplies.  

I hope you enjoyed our little library tour!  

Thanks for stopping by and God Bless!

What My Child is Reading: Letter A Books

This is our first time linking up with 'What my Child is Reading' at Mouse Learns, Mouse Grows. I'm not completely sure why I havent gotten on board before? It could be because our book selection is slightly limited as we dont have a local library to check books out at. But, I know we have some in our personal library that are worth sharing. Hopefully, we can make this a weekly blog post.

Our letter for the week was A. Here are some of the great books we read:



My "a" Book by Jane Belk. This was a cute, simple book that highlights words that start with A. In the book, a little boy goes about filling his box with things that start with the letter A. This is very fitting since we often do this in real life with our letter of the week. Both kids really liked this book, but especially Charger. He liked it so much that when he saw me with it to write this post he kept asking me to read it to him and wouldnt let me type anything until I had. Unfortunatly, it looks like you have to buy this book as part of a book club set {I hate book clubs}. So, maybe the library is a good place to look instead.



Berenstains' A Book by Stan & Jan Berenstain. A basic book that is likely in your home library, but is great for learning letter A.



Goodnight Arizona by Adam Gamble and Joe Veno. I LOVED this book. My father is an Arizona native and on their last trip out to visit, my parents brought this book back for the kids. It goes through all the Arizona landmarks and even the sports teams. A very fun book.



and My Big Animal Book by Roger Priddy. This fun book is a great resource for helping little ones learn the names of a variety of animals. It is packed with actual photos of animals from around the globe.

To see what others are reading this week, check out Mouse Learns Mouse Grows.

Scholastic's $1.00 Sale is on!

I was so excited when I read my email this morning! Scholastic has a sale about once a year where they offer a ton of books for 1.00. Last year was teacher's books, this year it is paper backs. The best part is that shipping is calculated using the total of your purchase, so it is very low! I just ordered 21 books and paid 23.27 shipped!! They will ship to Homeschooler's, but they will verify your school before they ship. The sale ends 2/28/10 or while supplies last. Check it out here. Happy shopping!!

Tot School Week 5

Mustang is 48 months, Charger is 22 months.

Tot School was a bit shorter this week, but we still had a lot of fun. One reason it was shorter was that Mustang had a dentist appointment. In the waiting room we found the book 'Show Me Your Smile.'



Normally, I dont recommend character books. In fact, I generally avoid them. But, this one was great! It described exactly what was going to happen when Mustang got into the big chair to see the dentist. It really calmed her fears and helped her know what to expect. If your tot is headed to the dentist, I highly recommend picking this book up first.

Back at the house...

We read the book Pastry School in Paris, which talks about measurement. It was a very cute book, but it really was a bit too old for my kiddos.


Then, we weighed things using this super cool scale we checked out at our library. Yes, we have the coolest library on earth and I am going to miss it sorely when we move :(



Mustang was interested in the weighing for a few minutes, Charger could care less. So, plan B...

I gave them each a container of beans and some measuring cups and spoons and let them measure and pour and transfer till their hearts content. Mustang wanted the scale, too. They poured for a long long time. Then they switched bean containers and poured again. 2 hours later, my shag carpet had a lot of beans on it, but they had a great time. This was by far the favorite activity of the week.






We read the book Applesauce Season. Great book!


Then, after a lunch of sandwiches and applesauce, we made these cute apples. I got the idea from My Montessori Journey. I didnt have any white paper plates and our heart shaped princess plates were not going to cut it, so I cut white circles out of cardstock.

I gave the kids strips of red construction paper and they tore them into smaller pieces to glue to the circle. I tore Charger's and he helped me put the red pieces on the drops of glue I put down. Mustang tore the pieces too small at first, but quickly got the hang of it.




Mustang received her first piggy bank from my parents for her birthday. We had fun going over the values and names of her money. But, the best part was putting the money IN the bank. Great fun and great hand eye coordination-especially trying to put the dollar bills in the little hole. I had to fold them up tight, but both Mustang and Charger were successful in putting the money in the slot. They were quite pleased.




We checked out this fantastic Time pack from our local library. It included the following items plus Eric Carle's Grouchy Ladybug. Both the Grouchy Ladybug and Monster Math School Time have pictures of clocks throughout the story. I had Mustang tell me the time on the clock in the book and then match her clock to the book. She could tell me the clocks that were on the hour, but no others. The toy clock only moved clockwise, so it really helped to teach her how a clock moves (she kept trying to make it go counter-clockwise). Charger loved the clock. He carried it around saying 'clock, clock.'

I picked up a cool workbook on time at our local Dollar Tree and took out the page that focused on clocks that were on the hour. I used Izzie, Mac & Me's reusable worksheet idea. It worked perfectly! So nice to know I can use it again in the future.





I found these big foam blocks at a yard sale for a 1.00 a few years back. GREAT investment! First we matched blocks. If you notice, there are different patterns in the blocks and Mustang thought we should make sure that not only the colors matched, but the patterns. Then we put them in order A-Z and 0-9. We stopped from time to time to sing the ABC song so that Mustang would know the next letter. This was great for increasing matching skills and alphabet order for Mustang. Charger worked on hand eye coordination and practiced the ABC song. It was also great fun!





For more fun ideas to teach your tot, check out 1+1+1=1 to see what others did this week.

Fill a Bag Book Sale!

I went to my first ever bag sale at our local library today. I have been missing out! It wasnt a skimply little plastic sack. It was a huge department store bag with handles, and if it was over flowing that was okay too. $3.00 a bag. All this fit into one bag:




65 books plus a Bob the Builder video. About 10 of the books were cheap board books that I could have done without, but it entertained Mustang to be able to find books and put whatever she wanted in the bad without me saying no ;). Yes, a few of them might end up in our next donate/yard sale pile, but that's okay!

Some of my favorites include a text book from our local Catholic School (many of the books were donations). It is called This Is Our Heritage copywrite date is 1967. It is a Faith and Freedom Basic Reader. A quick skim looks very interesting. We also picked up an Usborne sticker book that had only a few of the stickers used (albeight in the wrong places).

I skimmed through the piles and picked up books I remembered from my childhood. Anne of Green Gables, The Best Christmas Pagent Ever, A Summer to Die, Lisa's War, Sing Down the Moon, The Family Under the Bridge, and a ton more.

I was thrilled with our purchases. I will be looking for these kind of sales in our new area as we wont have a local library and the 'big city' library charges over 100 a year for a library card. At that rate I could probably open my own :).

Toy Yard Sale Money Learning

If you know me at all-or have read much of my blog-you know I enjoy going to yard sales. My daughter loves them too. She loves to go with me to see, and hopefully buy, toys. Well today, at her request, we had a toy yard sale.

She grabbed some of her toys and layed them on the coffee table for me to 'buy.' Using post it notes we priced her items. Then, she sold them to me.

Our local library has fantastic learning packs available for checkout, including a cool money package. It includes 3 books on money, a cool register, and play money. We used the register for our yard sale.


After our sale, we read the book Bunny Money, by Rosemary Wells. I HIGHLY recommend it.



Then we played with these neat ginormous coins we bought at the Dollar Tree on Wednesday. Mustang knew I had gotten them and was begging me to play with them. So, I had to quickly come up with a way to use them.



I found money work sheets HERE on moneyinstructor.com and printed them off. As you can see in the pictures, my printer only prints a fugly green currently (I am at the very end of my ink), so I had to write in all the details of the coins. Then, Mustang had to match up the toy coins to the right worksheet. This was very challenging for her, but I was really glad we did it. We went over each coin and she did get them all in the end, but she didnt want to play again today.