More back-to-school prep for readying your home for school from The Teaching Home newsletters. Today’s topic really hits home for a few of us! In today’s digital world, fewer and fewer families are investing in actual books. Studies are coming out showing that students retain more information when reading from actual books than they do when reading from screens. Find the USA Today College article here. You can click here for yet another article depicting the dilemma of digital learning. Taking notes by hand or by laptop, which is better? All research aside, today’s suggestions greatly assist families deciding what to keep and what to dispose of. And the great part? They can be applied to a digital library, too!
Organize Your Home Library
Homeschoolers never have too many books;
they just don’t have enough bookshelves!Sort, Then Save or Discard
To organize your library, first go through all the books in your home and sort them:
• Throw away any books that are not worth saving or giving away.
• Instead of keeping boxes of old workbooks that your children have done, consider removing the cover and a few sample pages from each one, then staple them together and file them.
• Give away or sell duplicate books unless they are really great, hard-to-get books that you want to keep to loan out or save for your children’s future libraries.
• Check with friends who might want to trade curriculum.
• Sell books in a yardsale or on the Internet (e.g. Homeschool Classifieds)
Clean• Clean books as you go with safe methods that will help preserve them. Hold books spine up and flick through the pages to dislodge dust away from the pages so the dust doesn’t sift between the pages. (Also see How to Clean Books.)
Shelve or Store• Keep like books together in different places in your home. Examples:
· Children’s personal reading books in their bedrooms
· Reference books in your library or family area
· Current school books together by each child’s grade
· Bibles and Bible study books
· Other like categories together• You might want to safely store books that your children want to take with them when they start their own families.
When you have completed work on your library you should be able to find and use your books better!
Have you enjoyed reading these from The Teaching Home? You could be missing out on a lot more from this publisher if you haven’t subscribed to their newsletters. We highly recommend subscribing! You can find more information at The Teaching Home.
North Star Independent Homeschoolers 