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For All You Librarian Types

Our books are aranged on set of shelves alphabetically by the author's last name. This is a blessing and a curse, a blessing because I can locate Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel in five seconds and a curse because the books must be returned to their proper place in order for this system to work. It is hard for the little ones to figure out how to reshelve so up 'til now they have taken out books and then returned them to the top of the shelf when they are finished for me to take care of when I have a few minutes.

I grabbed the camera and ran down the hall to record our pile of books to be shelved. Unfortunately, it was not very impressive. Some days I have a towering, leaning stack that threatens to topple and takes forever to put away.

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In my forays around the web, I came across an idea from the blog Se7en.org that offered the perfect solution to my dilemma. This is why we painted yesterday. We were making book markers or more accurately book shelf markers.

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The idea is this: Every time a child wants to remove a book from the shelf, he must first grab a marker. He pulls out the book and inserts his marker in the book's place. He may only read one book at a time and must return his book to the marked place before he can pull out another book.

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Now, instead of the Leaning Tower of Literary, I have a neat basket of color coordinating cards.

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I love ideas that contribute to easy organization and independence and this one is surely a winner!
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Comments

Unknown said…
They use this in public schools. When I was teaching, I remember my students doing this, although it didn't really sink in what exactly they were doing, and why it was such a great idea, nor that it could be employed at quite effectively at home. GREAT tip! Thanks for the reminder!
February 20, 2009 at 11:46 AM
tammi said…
VERY cool idea! Very creative. You are so stinkin' smart!!!
February 20, 2009 at 2:58 PM
Mary@notbefore7 said…
What a GREAT idea! Of course, my books aren't organized at all, but there are days that I think about it. Course, I'd be looking up author's constantly - thank goodness for goo.gle!
February 20, 2009 at 4:03 PM
Xandra@Heart-of-Service said…
What a great idea! And clearly your children are up to the task of creating incredibly cute markers!

Xandra
February 20, 2009 at 5:27 PM
Sarah said…
These are really neat! I had my books organized like this after I saw yours (several years ago). Then Sunshine and a friend pulled ALL of them off the shelf for a game and I nearly had a stroke. And now they are in book boxes and we can never find exactly what we are looking for.

sem
February 21, 2009 at 12:54 AM
ocean mommy said…
I LOVE THIS IDEA!!!! I know what we are going to do this afternoon. :)
February 25, 2009 at 12:16 PM
se7en said…
Hi there your book cards turned out great - I hope they work as well for you as they did for us!!! We did a whole lot more book nook goodies over the weekend and you may like to pop over and see the post:

http://www.se7en.org.za/2009/02/22/the-book-nook-revisited-in-se7en-steps

Have a lovely day!!!
February 26, 2009 at 9:11 AM
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