Once a Librarian...

As a former school librarian, I know first hand the importance of early literacy and making sure our babies have a variety of texts available to them at a young age. I have 4 yo and 1 yo boys and this week I have been working on organizing their spaces, including their books. I thought some of my friends might appreciate the what and whys of what I did book wise.

1. The 4 yo went through his board books and selected about 25 to give to his brother. He was so proud to help his brother build his library and this helped to reinforce that, when building a library, we have to make space occasionally for new books by finding new homes for ones we have outgrown. Anything beyond repair was trashed or will be used in arts and crafts.

2. I went through his picture books and removed a ton until I had just enough so that he could see the covers of all the books on the shelves. These are our bedtime and rest time reading books. Having the covers facing out allows him to pick. Removing the extra books from those wall shelves makes choosing less overwhelming.

I stored all the books we aren’t using right now in bins in his closet. I will rotate out the ones currently on the wall shelves next month and put some of the ones from the closet in their place. That allows us to not get bored with our selection and gives books that normally might be ignored, because they were behind a favorite, a chance to be in the spotlight.

3. I put a cube shelf in my 1 yo’s room that he could easily reach and put all the board books his brother had given him on there along with a couple toys and soft books. He has loved taking them off and on the shelves and looking through them on his own and with us. It is really important for children to be able to touch and chew on books at this stage, as well as being read to, because this is how they first become interested in interacting with books and leads to the development of concepts of print skills.

Pictured are:
- the wooden wall shelves I had my husband build when I was pregnant with our oldest.
- my oldest son’s little reading book shelf all with books that can be handled independently by him and his brother without being destroyed, so board books and the like. It gets a ton of use and is always filled with books going every which way. Also the side cushions are often missing because they make great shields when fighting off super villains.
-my youngest’s little book cubby
-my oldest reading to my youngest one of the books he gave him. Note, my oldest doesn’t actually read yet but he is retelling the story to his brother which is an awesome prereading skill.