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.

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.

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.

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

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