With a 3 year old and an 18 month old we read a lot of books and we have acquired a lot as well. We have set up a book rotation where there are between 15 and 20 books out for my children to pick in a day. I rotate out the books every night. If you rotate your books you will get more reading and less discission fatigue from your kids from having too many books out at one time.
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Rotations
We have 6 different rotations of books. For each rotation I try to have one of each of the following themes:
- Alphabet
- Numbers
- Shapes
- Colors
- Behavior book
- Cute story
- Bedtime book
Types Of Books
I also try to make sure that there is a good mix of the type of book so in each rotation I try to keep one of the following:
- Lift the flap book
- Touchy-feely book
- Extra small book
- Extra large book
- Pop up book
Favorite Books
Some of my kids favorite books include:
- Hands are not for hitting
- Goodnight numbers
- Finger trail ABC’s
- Finger trail 123’s
- Corduroy’s shapes
- All better
- The little mouse, the hungry bear, and the red ripe strawberry
- Chicka chicka boom boom
- Sleep train
- The rabbit listened
- Families belong together
- Play with clay
- Llama llama hide & seek
- Llama llama red pajama
- That’s not my train
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Upkeep
About once every couple of months I go through my rotations and re-sort them because some days my son asks to keep a book out, or a book ends up somewhere where it didn’t belong (like underneath the couch!). When I do this, I spread them all out on the ground and sort them into piles based on the kind of book it is. I then divvy them up into boxes and put them away.
I also have a box full of “banned books” These are books that I am sick of reading and I have set aside until I sort through all my books and decide if I am ready to try reading that book again. Some books go back into rotation, other books stay in my “banned book” box. If I get sick of a book through out the day, I may slip it into the banned book box the next chance I get.
I don’t always end up rotating the books every day. If we don’t read much I will keep the same books for another day. Some days I have my daughter help me put the old books away and put the new books out. She loves to help!
We also get library books on occasion and then we add those into the rotation by replacing one of my boxes for a day.
On any typical day my kids will eventually end up with every single book on the floor or couch from having pulled them off the shelf to read or look at. But if we have more than 20 books out at once my son has a tough time deciding what to read and my daughter ends up throwing all the books onto the floor. This is where rotations are very helpful to make it so my kids can enjoy all the books we have without all of the struggle of keeping them organized.
