how many books do you put in your kinder library at the beginning of school? I categorize mine and was thinking about only putting 3 bins out - maybe 20 books or so???? What do ya'll do?
I put out four bins. That means when it is center time and a table goes to the library there will be one bin per child (I seat four kids per table). My district made these cute little signs that say "Library Under Construction" with pictures of hard hats that I put out until will fill up the library.
that is a good point - to have a bin per child. I also thought about putting a small bin on each table for first thing in the morning or any other time we have a minute or two. What do you think? Will that be too much for them at the beginning?
jeanniemleigh- I'm wondering how you categorize your books? Mine are all just put into tubs. I would like to get some kind of organization to them, but I'm not sure where to start:woot: Headstart suggests 5 per child? Do you add more to that throughout the year?
In the very beginning of the year I just put a bin of what I like to call "disposable" books- one per child Then, after a few days when I have taught them how to properly handle the books I unveil the classroom library and teach them how to use it. I have too many books to count in my classroom library. I know current research recommends 8-15 books per student, but I would never have all of them available to pre-k or kinder students on the very first day, that's a disaster waiting to happen :lol: Here's a link to some info about class libraries I found on the Scholastic site you may find helpful.
mom2two - my library is organized in different ways. For 1st Ihad categories and levels. Some of my books are leveled and other are categorized by subject and some are categorized by author. For example, I have alot of Marc Brown books and alot of Kevin Henkes books. These authors have characters that are smiliar in some aspect among their books. The are great to teach 'making connections'. Other bins I have are books about animals, manners, etc. this just depends on what kind of books you have. And for 1st and 2nd they need *some* opportunity to read at our near their level. I was wandering about how many books should be in a library center near the beginning of the year (of course after you've had a chance to teach expectations and the like). I think I plan to go with what another poster said.....about 4 bins and slowly add from there. I have an extremely large library and would never put them all out.
oh and vannapk - thanks for your link. I have been to your site and others and still missed this. My biggest task right now is learning how to take my stuff down a little. thanks
I have some bins organized for Accelerated Reader and then the rest of my books are done by theme or authors. I have the primary colored bins and then have a label with a numbered dot the same color as the bin. The books in the bin have the same dot - color and number - as the bin. At first I give my kids a basket of picture books and then we move on to the bins. They have to learn how our books are organized.
I did find some nice book bin labels that I printed off at Kelly's Kindergarten. These seem pretty helpful. Now, it's just a matter of sorting through them all!!! I also don't want to put all of the bins out at the same time. I'm feeling that I'm running out of room in my classroom. Where am I going to store the extra bins that I am not using:woot: