Classroom Library Labels

     While I'm working on the 40 Bags in 40 Days project, I'm also organizing A LOT of things around the house.  I'm at the point where I'm now going through all of our books.  We have sooooo many books.  The kids and I love books and they're so easy to collect.  I still have a ton of books from my classroom library (back when I was teaching) plus the kids get books as gifts and usually purchase some at garage sales.  It's hard to tell the kids "No, I'm sorry you can't have a book.  I'd much rather you spend your money on some silly toy and not read!"  Who says that?!?

     Well, our book shelves are in our attached garage.  We really don't have a lot of wall space in our
house, it's an old farm house and has a lot of windows or large entries for each room.  There honestly isn't a place for the book shelves, so in the garage they go.  We do have a large basket of books in the living room.  I trade the books out every month or so.  We also have another basket of library books that gets changed once a week.

     The book shelves were beginning to over flow.  The books had filled every shelf and were now being stacked on top of each other.  The little kids have now started getting books off the shelf and don't quite put them back the right way either.  With all of the organizing that I've been doing, I knew that this needed it too.  I started cleaning out the garage this week and the books are now off the shelves.  They're in some plastic bins and I'm going to go through each book.

     Each book that we're keeping (some are baby books, some are ruined and some we just don't want- so we'll donate and recycle) will get a sticker label on the outside.  This will help us put the books back in the appropriate bin.  Plus when I go back in to the classroom, the books will be ready to go back with me!  BONUS!!

     The books are going to get organized like I had in my classroom.  Each book will have a category and each category will have its own basket.  That way we can bring in a basket of interest when we change out our books.  I'm hoping that this will have keep us more organized.  Wish us luck ;)

This is similar to what I'm working on now.

     I'm not going to be using all of these labels right away but I made out some extra ones for when I'm in the classroom.  We'll be using the yellow and gray ones but I also made a black polka dot version of the labels.  You can find them all HERE.