{Getting creative with our book space}

In conjunction with the National Year of Reading I am participating in My Little Bookcase’s Book Adventure. To be precise my family is participating in this project as the set tasks aim to draw participation from all family members.  Project one, Getting creative with book storage, aimed to get families to re-arrange/re-design their book storage to make books more accessible to their children. Since purchasing our own home late last year this has been something that I have been working towards in both Finn & Harper’s rooms. Back in December we finished Harper’s forward facing book shelves so this project prompted me to change things around in Finn’s room.

Finn’s bookshelf before the project looked like this:

Lots of books, but no real order to them. Another thing about Finn, he loves order. Craves it and is sometimes put out that the rest of his family don’t feel the same way ;)

Recently Finn has been requesting that we collect books from his bookshelf and take them to other parts of the house for a solid reading session; on the grass in the backyard, in the loungeroom or the most prized reading spot, in Mummy and Daddy’s bed. I thought that placing some plastic tubs in the shelving spaces would in aide us to quickly grab a box and head to a new location. I also planned to tie it in with a idea I saw on Pinterest. In this article it gave the suggestion to divide your child’s book collection into catergories/genres. I have been talking to Finn about the difference between Fiction and Non-fiction books so I thought this new way would assist him in grasping the concept.

It was quite easy to get the kids involved in setting up the new system. For Finn I only had to use the word “organising” and he was ready to go, for Harper I told her we were going to make “tall book towers on Finn’s bed”. Using her hands and building towers. Tick. She was in too.

{Book sorters at work}

{Books, books, books!}

We set to work taking all the books off his shelf, apart from his hardcover books. I was happy for them to remain filed spine out as Finn is able to locate most of these books by their height or spine colour.

Once all the books were on the bed I told Finn and Harper that we needed to search for all the Non- fiction books. Finn was quick to pick up that these books usually had photographs in them or on the cover and diligently looked for them. For the next box we created a ‘Construction Books’ box to house all of Finn’s books on diggers, trucks, dumpers and the like. The boy is obsessed and I didn’t realise how many books under this subject he had until we put them all in the box. As Finn is starting to talk and ask about authors I thought it would be a good idea to collate all the titles from the Authors that he loves (Stephen Michael King, Oliver Jeffers, Mem Fox, Pamela Allen, Jeannie Baker to name a few). The last box was for remaining ‘Fiction Books’. The book sort out also allowed Finn to look at books that may be more suited to his sister's room (younger board books) or to donate to our local Op-shop. He was happy to move some books on, and Harper was happy to receive some.

{Sorted and labelled}

One week in the boxes are working well. Finn chooses one book box a day and we source out a new reading location to look through and read some of the books in the box. Of coarse we don’t always stick with the book box themes. Sometimes Finn will grab a mixture of books and then return them to their original box (with a little help).

The end product:

{Above the bookshelf: Little Golden books, Golden book stacking blocks & Thomas story books}

{On the wall above the bookshelf: A new wall hanging}