Fill your house
with stacks of books,
in all the crannies
and all the nooks.
--Dr. Seuss
When I was a kid I loved to throw my legs over the arm of our living room chair and read all day long. Although I had plenty of friends, I loved my best friends -- Nancy Drew, Harriet the Spy and Nellie Olson. In addition to reading kid-appropriate books, I loved to read the books my parents had in the living room of our home -- Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a book on fortune telling and the entire World Book Encyclopedia set. There were more, I'm quite sure, but these are the ones that I remember clearly. I ventured out beyond my everyday "kid" reading because there were other books in our home that called to me.
Studies show that kids who grow up with 25 books or more in their home have higher reading test scores. Other studies show that kids who have more types of literacy materials (magazines, nespapers, encyclopedias, books) in their homes also have higher reading proficiencies.
It is incredibly important to me that my kids have access to books. Although we are regular patrons at our public library (I'm actually at the library several times a week), I want our children to be surrounded by books in their own home. We have books in every room of our home. Every single room.
When we started afterschooling Geography, I needed a place to corral our geography books. There is no rhyme or reason to the books in our home. There are kid books on all three floors. In my bedroom, Christmas craft books are stacked next to Stieg Larsson's "Millennium Trilogy" which is next to my battered copy of Shakespeare's "Henry V". I dream of having an actual library, but I need to sell a helluvalot of Nancy Drew Date Books to add on to our tiny house in the woods.
Instead, I opted for a nice, sturdy bookshelf (found at Home Depot, of all places!) in our living room.
The top shelf actually houses our "Science" library, but that is on it's way to another bookshelf, as we are outgrowing this one. The second shelf displays items from the country we are currently studying. Right now, we are immersed in all things Korean:
That's Baby G's American Girl Molly wearing her own hanbok (the traditional clothing of Korea). The shelf holds the on-topic books we have not yet read as well as a flag of the country and our country blocks (more about this later).
The next shelf holds our general geography books and the books we've already read about the country we're studying:
Below that, the books are organized by continent following the Montessori color-coding system. So far in our studies, we've only covered Japan, India and North/South Korea, so there are an awful lot of yellow labels.
Our puzzles, games and ArchiQuest blocks are nestled in with the geography books, allowing my girls to reinforce what they've read.
For those of you following our Afterschooling Adventures, I hope this helps inspire you to build your own library. Want to see some of the books, puzzles and games we keep on our bookshelf? Head on over to my Amazon Affilliate Store.
I wish I could share photos for my library here. Thanks for sharing this.
Posted by: daringabroad | Friday, September 22, 2017 at 04:31 PM
I would love to see them! Send them to me at [email protected]! I am always looking for inspiration.
Posted by: PaperGoddess | Friday, September 22, 2017 at 09:44 PM