Organizing Classroom Books

This morning I took Baby Sneaker to my classroom to attempt some classroom library organizing.

Last year a good portion of my books were put away in my cabinets to make room on my shelves for my games and learning activities. I realized it was really tough to locate books when I wanted them and I decided to change things around this year. Because I share the prime real estate shelf space with my classroommate, I cannot keep all of my things easily accessible, but I do want to have a better system for organizing my books so that I can keep track of them more easily.

I've seen many ideas on Pinterest for how to organized books, but most often they are to organize the books in a way that makes them easily accessible for kids. I am not trying to covet my books and not let kids touch them, but I am keeping my books on a "teacher shelf" and only putting out a limited number at a time on my rain gutter shelves for kids to look at. In half day Kindergarten, our time is so scheduled, that the books I have are really for read alouds and instructional purposes and we don't do a reading workshop where kids can self select and read on their own. I am not planning to utilize baskets and labels like I've seen a lot of other teachers do, but I wanted a way to sort my books by time of year, theme, author, etc. with a way to clearly separate the sections.

So, I decided that rather than looking to how other teachers organize their classroom libraries, I really needed to look to the actual library. When Baby Sneaker and I went to storytime at our local library I liked how they separate their books by the first letter of the author's last name and they have dividers to indicate the letter for each section. I tried to using cardstock to make dividers and it looks okay, but I think they need to be laminated. They are too long as they are right now for me to laminate them with the pouches I bought, so I still need to figure out how to make them sturdier. I may try to cut them a bit shorter if it will still allow enough to stick out on the end.

My next step will be to print out labels and stick them on so that I can easily look through the dividers and locate the books I am looking for. The bottom shelf is kind of a journey through the school year.

Kindergarten/Back to School

Expectations/Behavior

Fall

October/Halloween

November/Thanksgiving

Winter/Snow

Gingerbread Stories

Christmas/Santa (don't get a lot of use out of those)

Groundhog's Day

Valentine's Day

Presidents/USA

100th Day of School

End of the Year

Some additional groups are:

Multicultural Stories

Individuality/Being Special

Colors

Math

Science

Then on the middle shelf I started grouping by favorite authors/characters

Pete the Cat

Froggy

Dr. Seuss

Berenstein Bears

Little Monster

Clifford

Mo Willems

I have a huge pile left that still needs to be sorted, but working with a 16-month old in tow is pretty difficult. I had this dream that maybe she would nap if I brought her blanket and her paci and of course Curious George, but she wanted nothing to do with that. 

While she naps at home, I'm going to work on my labels and then hopefully I can finish the rest on Friday since my in-laws will be visiting and they can stay at home with Baby Sneaks while she naps so I can have some really good work time by myself. 

I don't know why I am feeling this way, but I have this huge urge to organize everything. I have gone through almost all of the closets in my house and I want to do the same in my classroom--it's just harder to get time in there without my mini tornado that takes everything out while I am trying to make things neater. She can be a great helper at home, but there is way too much tempting stuff in the classroom for her to check out. 

How do you organize your classroom library?

 Do your students have access to all of your books or do you keep some in a location that is off limits for kids?