Book Baskets

Material from a previous blog:

Here is a peek into our school-maybe an idea you can use.  We have a part of each school day called book basket time.  We have been doing book baskets for 3 years now & have really seen great returns on this investment!  All of our boys enjoy books & book basket gives them time to enjoy books & allows me to make sure they are seeing/reading certain books.  Although we have used book baskets for several years, this year we have incorpaorated it into our workbox schedule & it fits beautifully.  Book basket is a center on everyone’s schedule & it provides a great break from seat work- my older children often enjoy their snack during this time too!

So what is book basket?  A basket of books, of coarse!  Each of my boys has a basket (ours are actual baskets but they could be anything- plastic bins, cardboard boxes, or even bags.)  Inside those baskets are books that I want them to look at or read.  There are several books in there so they may choose which books to read on which particular day but books stay in the basket until they are read so eventually they all get read. 

What kinds of things go in the book baskets?

4th grader:  Most of the books I put in his basket are supplemental books to go along with other things we are studying.  He consumes books much faster than I could ever keep up with & I don’t want his reading to be limited by my time.  Our history program is Mystery of History (MOH) & we read that text together in our family time.  I also choose living books to go along with some of the major topics from MOH, or ones that I think my boys will be particulalrly interested in, or great hsitorical fiction that I just think they should read.  Although we sometimes choose these living books as family read alouds we don’t have time to read them all so I put them in his book basket.  I also put in books that supplement our current science topics but which I don’t plan to read as a family.  Lastly, I include books which relate to the upcoming Fabulous FUN Family Friday (FFFF- see seperate post.)  For example, this week our FFFF is camo bugs so I will put bug books in his book basket for him to read before FFFF.  This whets the appetite for the upcoming unit study, creates a foundation of knowledge, & minimizes the amount we will have to read on FFFF.  Some of the books that I put in his basket are only to thumb through (unless he wants to read it all) or have specific pages to read & I denote either of those with a sticky note on the front.

Pre-schooler & 1st grader: The majority of the books in my younger son’s book baskets are books that relate to the upcoming FFFF.  My pre-schooler does not read & my first grader is not really confidant in reading solo yet so I include lots of books with great photos, drawings, & graphs.  This works great because by the time FFFF arrives they have already gathered quite a bit of info from the books & if there is something that they saw that particularly interests either of them I can read it in detail then.  This ensures that I am really helping them learn about the things that interest them instead of only what my mind sees as important.  When I collect our FFFF books I check out as many great books on our unit study topic as I can find.  I never expect to read them all aloud to them, that would be impossible in one day.  Instead, I pick a few pearls to read aloud & then pass the others through their book baskets during the week.  I am amazed by what they learn & the incredible questions they ask as a result of this process.  Another type of book that goes in these boy’s book baskets are free choice library books.  When we make our monthly library trip I allow each of them to check out a certain # of books of their choice.  They bring the books to me so I can make sure we aren’t bringing home anything that would go against our morals or beliefs but other than that I am pretty loose on what they select.  What that means is that we wind up going home with quite a few books which I think "stink."  They don’t have any objectionable content; they are just poorly written, predictable, shallow, based on cartoon movies, etc.  I don’t want them to be discouraged & I don’t want to read the books so I cycle those through the book baskets in the course of the month as well. 

For my younger boys I ususally put 2-3 new books in their book baskets each day.  They look through the books at their leisure (during their scheduled book basket center) & if they are finished with it they return to our library bag (or our bookshelf.)  This also makes it really simple for me to know which books are ready to be returned to the library & which ones need to be renewed.  The only part that gets a little confusing is that these boys usually look at all the same books so I occasionally get confused on who has had what since I do not write down the specific titles I put in the baskets.  When this happens I just ask if they have had a chance to read the book or not.

For my oldest son I usually keep 2-5 books in his basket.  Most of his books take more than 1 day to complete but having several in there gives him more choice on what he feels like reading that day.  He might have 1 very long novel in process, 2 informational books (like the DK Eyewitness books,) & then maybe some short books as well.  I even cycle through some of his younger brother’s books occasionally for some fun. light reading.  Occasionally I put in a magazine I want him to read too!  He follows the same process of leaving books in his basket until he is finished with them.  The only difference is that when he does finish a book he records it’s title & author on his reading log before he putsit away.  This way we have a record of exactly what he has read.

We love our book baskets; maybe it is something you might want to try in your little schoolhouse too!  I’d love to hear other’s variations; I’m sure many of you do similar things.