books, books, shelving books

Recently I realized that I needed to organize and tidy up our school area, mostly our bookshelves. We are book hounds, so we have books of a vast number of subjects and they all get used regularly. This is great, and not so great! Great because our interests are diverse and evolving, and we love to look at, and reread favorite books. Not great because it makes it hard to lay my hands on the butterfly books, and stories when everyone keeps using them and putting them away in different spots on the shelves. To solve this I have put up a bookshelf, it is now our working bookshelf, and I am committed to keeping only the books or subjects we are currently working on, or in, there. This means I will have to regularly go through and remove books, reshelve them, and pull the new ones out, and keep up with this, yipes! We have such a diverse subject load right now that there is no particular sense to the titles, currently in use are;

Smart 2 the max basic math skills 1st grade, Art around the world in the time of Renoir, Art masterpieces to color by Dover books, let's sound out words, fill in the word math problems 2nd grade, Explore and learn about me and my body, story starters worksheets, maps from current and Biblical times, I can read workbook of phonics, My silly body book and pull out person with lift the flap parts, Money and counting worksheets, Wild animal dot-to-dot, children's dictionary, the Very hungry caterpillar, papa please get me the moon, the secret birthday message, and the grouchy ladybug(all Eric Carle) Little House on the Prairie, Farmer Boy, Little House in the Big Woods(Laura Ingalls Wilder), Trumpet of the Swan (E B White).

This is our currently in use shelf, meaning that we will use and read form all of these books this week, some will be pulled out and read many times, and these are just our books, we also have 2 bags of library books, on ancient Sumeria, ancient Sumerian cuneiform writing, butterflies, and assorted reading materials. Plus, yes there are more, another bag of books at the library waiting for me to pick up. Have I mentioned that we have a diverse array of interests and subjects, and that we think nothing of doubling up on science and math, or art for that matter.

Now the reason for having so many bookshelves is coming clear, and why the need for a smaller, more select set of shelves is necessary for us to get anything accomplished. So, since we have such big plans for the week, I had better get back to them now, I will post later about exactly what we are working on with all of these books, we have big plans for this summer, and these books are just the start, I can't wait(especially now that I can find the things I want to use!!)