Our classroom library was near our Word Wall in a different area of the classroom from the unit of study books. The unit of study books were in their basket by the carpet area where we held large group lessons. I liked rotating classroom library books to match our unit of study. For example, if we were in the Gardening Unit, I had similar books such as books about gardening, insects, flowers, pollinators, etc. I also kept some of the students’ favorite books from previous units of study in the classroom library, as well as some other miscellaneous books about counting, ABC’s, rhyming, emotions, etc. At the end of this video, you can see the little blue couch and the classroom library books next to it.  

I am very fortunate and blessed because my family has many books in our home. Books from my Prekindergarten classroom library, from my student teaching in a fourth-grade classroom, my personal books, my husband’s books, and the books that family and friends have given our girls. In June of 2024, I dedicated some time into inventorying all of these books on an excel spreadsheet and labeling the books according to where they belong (Ex. My personal books, my husband’s books, our girls’ books, or classroom library books).  

Thankfully, I did not have to type in the individual book’s information. My husband found a phone app called BookBuddy that scans book barcodes, finds the book, and gathers a lot of information about that book into a spreadsheet in this app. So, I used this app and emailed myself the list of books and all of their information. After emailing the book information to myself, I would copy and paste the information that I wanted in my complete inventory list such as author, title, year published, a summary, genre, etc. The app was a major time saver and great resources; however, I found two downsides to it. It only holds 50 books at a time, and it was difficult to input books that are very old. So, I would scan 50 books into the app, email the information to myself, copy and paste the information into my own excel spreadsheet for my book inventory, delete the books from the app, and continue scanning barcodes. For the older books or books without barcodes, I would use the search option to look up the book by title or ISBN; or if that did not find the book, I would enter the book information manually. 

I was able to inventory all of my daughters’ books, my personal books, and my early childhood classroom library books. I have not had the opportunity (or if I am being honest, motivation) to finish inventorying my husband’s book (they are a lot of older books) or my upper elementary classroom library books.

After inventorying and adding the books in my home to the final spreadsheet, I reorganized the books around our home. I placed a lot of his school and research books on the shelf near his desk while I also placed all of the family friendly books (like Narnia, The Jungle Book, etc.) on the shelf in the living room where our toddler could also pick one for me to read to her if she wanted. I put a lot of my professional development, Bible studies, and entertainment books on a shelf in our bedroom. I went even farther to separate the books I have finished reading from the ones that I plan to read next.  

I bought some cute little organizers for my daughters’ books to neatly contain them in our living room. I also bought some cute shelves for the classroom library books which I categorized the books by month/season themes. Right now, the books on the shelves are fall themes, tree books, harvesting, spooky, winter, Christmas, and some other general books such as rhyming, animals, counting, ABC’s, etc.  With these shelves, I created a reading and library space for my toddler as shown.  

I love how this space has come together and how these books are organized. It is perfect for me to grab relevant books for the time of year to read to my girls and gives my toddler the freedom to choose her own books to look through in her reading space.