Confessions

Okay, I'll admit it... I am a children;s book hoarder.  Every time I go to a bookstore, fill out a Scholastic book order or shop on Amazon I just can't help myself!  I am ashamed to admit that this has led to piles of books in my classroom.  Piles of sad, unorganized books just waiting to be read.  Recently, it got to the point where books were bursting out of bookshelves and cabinets, sliding from the top of my desk and exploding out of our classroom library.

On Monday, we had no students and were almost done packing up our classroom (EVERYTHING has to be put away and piled up for the summer).  I decided that SOMETHING had to be done.  I gathered all of the books onto a few tables and piled them into about 34234435 milk crates.  I thought of as many themes and authors as I could, wrote them on index cards and got to work sorting.  I added more themes and author study authors as I went along.  I also created an area for authors in alphabetical order.

 This is the gigantic mess when I first started sorting... so embarrassing!

 Here are a few of the themed piles (in alphabetical order, of course)

Finally, I placed each pile of books into milk crates by theme and stored them away for the summer.  This felt SO good!

 

In the fall, I hope to find a beautiful bookshelf like this one to store all of my newly organized books in.  I also created a bunch of dividers on my computer to print out on cardstock, laminate and stick between the books.  Yay for organization!