Hey all! I’m popping in quick today with my newest homeschool habit – the book basket. I can’t claim a book basket as my own creative invention and it is certainly nothing new, but implementing one in our own home has helped our little family solve the problem of reading more of the titles on our over-stuffed bookshelves.
Business Schtuff…
Before we get to the book basket, I also have some have business items to share with you. First up, the giveaway winner is Lucy M. Congratulations, Lucy! I’ve already sent you an email so you can claim your prize!
Secondly, some of you are aware that our family is undergoing some tough times medically right now. One of our children is quite sick and spent 12 days in PICU and the hospital in January. He was even flown to a bigger hospital because our regional hospital didn’t feel like they were helping to resolve his case. We are so happy to be back home with a solid plan for treatment, but he has a long road of recovery/treatment ahead of him. Please pray for his healing and for our family.
What does this mean for the blog? I will definitely be less present than before, but will try to post when I can (I already have several finished posts in queue). I’ve enjoyed connecting with many of you and enjoy writing and photographing our homeschool, family, and faith. I think blogging will be a good outlet for me during this tough time, though the time I will have to devote to it will be sparse!
On to the post!
The problem with too many books…
I love books! What homeschooler doesn’t? While I love visiting the library and bringing home an insane amount of titles for my children to peruse, I enjoy even more having good books on our own shelves.
7 short years ago, our children’s book collection fit on one very small bookshelf. Now our collection spans 5 bookshelves that spill into a couple baskets placed on children’s nightstands.
I’ve found many of our family’s favorite titles at local thrift stores, garage sales, and library book sales. I suggest books to family members when they need a gift idea. And I occasionally splurge on a brand new read for Christmas, Easter baskets, and birthday gifts .
Just a sampling of our ample book supply!
As our bookshelves grew…and grew…and grew, I noticed that many titles got lost on our packed shelves (especially those picture book paperbacks!). We seemed to be reading the same books over and over again and not using our whole collection.
Enter the book basket.
After our family celebrated Epiphany, I decided it was time to rework the Christmas book basket with things from our own shelves.
I quickly thumbed through the picture book titles on our shelves chose several winter themed books for January and others that hadn’t been read for awhile. Then off to our “science” and “history” shelves and grabbed a few more. Finally, I put our latest family read aloud in the book basket.
We’ll fill the remainder of the basket when we make our next trip to the library. Yep, we are going to get messy a bit here and include library books too!
The home for our new book basket – under our repainted $5 garage-sale “entertainment center.”
Homeschool Book Basket Formula:
(I’m hoping to follow this general guideline every time I refresh the book basket.)
- 3-5 board books (if you have a toddler or baby)
- 5-8 picture books
- Books that fit the season/holiday/feast days/etc.
- Science book
- History book
- Read aloud book
It all took me less than 5 minutes, but has expanded our reading horizons already. We are enjoying titles that have been collecting dust for some time.
Combining library books with our own
I’ve held back from making a book basket until now because we already had a library book basket.
I didn’t like mixing our own books with the library’s or the idea having two separate baskets. Wouldn’t combining titles result in lost library books and fines?
But I also knew this system needed to be workable and, in all reality, I wasn’t going to take time sorting out the library books at the end of reading session either. (The kids would just mix them up in their browsing too!)
Despite my hesitation, mixing them is exactly what I ended up doing. My plan is to sort through the book basket before each trip to the library.
I’ll pull out the library books and put them in our library bag and take that time to replace our own books with new ones from our shelves. Doing this every couple of weeks (our normal interval between library visits) will keep the book basket fresh and intriguing for the kids.
If you followed along last year, you know I picked out liturgically appropriate books at the beginning of every month to add to our feast table book basket. Sometimes the feast table book basket was ignored. I’ll be throwing the liturgically appropriate books in with our book basket as well.
Do you use a book basket? What tips do you have for me?
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I just started doing a book basket in my home as well! (The idea was a spin off of your liturgical book basket.) I had also noticed that we weren’t reading the books we had on our shelves, so this has worked very well so far! I have started incorporating our library books with our own books, too, and haven’t had any trouble with lost library books. Thanks for sharing your ideas! I like how you intentionally pick a science and history book… I think I will try to do that, too!
It is such a simple thing, but it has really helped us get our books read. Glad it’s working for you too!