Day 4: 01/07/12 - Children's Library Area

Today is the big Girl Scout meeting and since there is a possibility of all 24 girls showing up, I need to do some extra big cleaning.  This morning was full of cleaning the bathrooms, toy area, under the couches and entertainment area, mopping the floors, dusting everything, vacuuming the carpets and cleaning the big sliding glass doors.  

After all that looked spic and span, I headed over to the kid's library shelving. When I tell the kids to put their books back on the shelves, they don't put them standing up, they throw them on top of other books, toss them on top of the shelf, even shove them inside of each other. What a disaster! Here comes the inner Librarian in me ......

I took all the books off the shelf and decided there was a place for each book.  There are age levels to the books. Lauren and Brayden read the pre-school/Kindergarten books. The phonics are more at the 1st and 2nd grade levels. The rest are in Level 3 or Level 4 and chapter books. Oh, and don't forget the coloring books, the Educational workbooks, the dictionaries & thesaurus and writing tablets.  There are only 9 cubicles to the shelf so I have to be tricky.  

The bottom will get the Educational books, the coloring books and the Pre-School/Kindergarten level books. The kids that read those will be eye level as they sit on the ground.  The next thing was to sort the books by sizes. Yup, here's the OCD in me coming out again.  The majority of the middle row of books was  an all-around fun level to read. The kids that can't read the text can look at the pictures to read instead. The larger books that are full of multiple stories will also go on the middle row.  The top row is full of the books that are on the 3rd and 4th grade levels. The chapter books are a big thing with Lexie and Bella and so I tried to organize them in their series (such as the "Fudge" books, the "Ramona" books, the "My Sister is a Vampire" books and the "Judy Moody" books.)  The older girls are responsible enough to take care of these books since they usually only read one at a time.  The last level (the top of the book shelf) I had to create for the older books. The books that are more on the "mommy" level or the ones that are just too advanced for the younger kids.

Ta Da!  A neat and tidy Children's Library Area. I think I'm going to invite the librarian over for coffee now!  :-)