Kids Books

[pgkcb13]

Originally Posted by harmoni247 We homeschool, and we do keep factual books in that count [though we also use the library for these], as well as reader books...I guess I count one BOB book box set as one book though, it's probably more like ten or fifteen mini books in a set. We also have a quiet time in their bedroom and my oldest stays awake while the younger ones sleep...it ends up being more like two hours, and his two books keep him satisfied. Some of our books are compilation books: we have Shel Silverstein, Grimms fairy tales, and Dr. Suess. So if he's feeling like he wants more reading material that day, he takes one of those in with him, but the majority of the time he just reads regular single books. He's learned to sit and think and daydream really well, so I love that. He can sit on a train in the quiet car for an hour and just look out the window, no distractions needed. I think his quiet times have helped him get to that point. I don't think our books were violent or inappropriate, just not how we wanted our kids to act, kwim? Like the Curious George books: George never listens to the man in the yellow hat, he makes all sorts of trouble and is usually rewarded in some way by the end of the book. Those didn't make the cut. Any book that has nine pages of bad behavior and one last page of reconciliation didn't make the cut either. I read a study about the types of stories children are exposed to relating to the child's aggressiveness rated by their mothers. The books where a character learns a lesson don't really sink in for the age group the books are targeted at; instead, the children end up mimicking the bad behavior in the stories. I found the same to be true of my kids, so we purged those book too. The best examples of this for us were the Berenstein Bears, and the Duckling gets a Cookie type books, but there are tons out there like this. we only kept books whose plots didn't contain tons of bad behavior; whether or not it was a lesson was irrelevant. The books still have conflicts, they just don't involve disrespect.

This! I noticed little critter books were out too, in fact a lot of what people consider classic kids books just weren't teaching things I wanted my kids to learn!

Other-

We rotate seasonal books too, they are kept in a basket under our nature shelf

We homeschool but I don't keep 'fact' books because they are so easy to get from the library.

ODD does quiet time and she's allowed to take three books with her. Lately though she's been doing sparkle stories for quiet time pretty often which has been kind of nice too.

[tallanvor]

Only one of my kids went though a terror stage at the library. When we hit that stage with her, I would go at a time DH could keep her at home. Or, I would put books on hold online, which meant I just ad to pick them up and check them out. Much quicker than going, picking out books, and then checking out.

[TypeAMom]

I'm losing the battle of the books. There were 35 books in my daughter's room and I forgot she's got about 10 in my car and more in my husband's car. I'm struggling to get rid of enough. I've taken out ones with rude characters and ones she's outgrown. I think I'm going to try to do something like the closet thing people do for their clothes. I'll put 25 books on the play room shelf. She can pick out her 3 for bed every night and any others she asks us to read her (which will then be brought to her room). Any not picked out/left on the shelf in 2 weeks will be donated.

[harmoni247]

Originally Posted by TypeAMom That's amazing. How long did it take him to get to that point?

Not long. By the time they grow out of naps and start doing quiet time instead, they seem to outgrow the need for distraction on our train rides. Trains, coffeeshops, and bookstores are the most common quiet places we go to, and my older two boys no longer needed distractions shortly after age 3, again, right around the time they started long quiet times. My two year old still needs a book or two on the train to occupy him and keep him from disturbing everyone, and occasionally my emergency stock clif bar. Don't get me wrong, they have LOADs of energy and are crazy, goofy boys that make me want to rip my hair out the rest of the time. They've just learned how to tone it down and occupy their thoughts and be bored for a bit when I let them know it's a quiet place/time.

So part of the reason my count was so high was that I had a few of my books in there, photo albums, coloring books and workbooks. After taking out these and books to donate, I ended up with 50 books that she's not old enough for yet. They seem like quality books (I reviewed the ones I haven't read yet) so I can't justify parting with them at this point. Additionally, I have 25 books for current use and 25 rotated out. I still have to go through the ones in her room, but my goal is to keep with the above numbers so I'll try to get rid of some more of the current ones. Wish me luck! 100 total is better than 200, right? Rationalize, rationalize, rationalize.

You've cut it in half on your first go, that's great progress.

[weareborgswife]

We have TONS of books- I am an avid reader as are my children.. we now use the library often, (go 1-2 times a week), but my son goes through 7-15 books within a couple of days (he is 10), and then will read the others on his shelf. (Expedite from Ikea with 6 cube spaces full). My girls have 2 cubes of American Girl books, and 4 more cubes of "regular", plus a smaller shelf of board books for my youngest.

I have two large bookshelves of books for our homeschooling, and personal books that I love to re-read. I am trying to transition to books on my Kindle so I have cleared out some of my fiction books and haven't bought a paper book for me in quite a while.

We also homeschool and used a literature based curriculum for the first 4 years, and we only had one car so I only got to the library once or twice a month- so ended up with a bunch of books to round out the curriculum so I could school easily if I wasn't able to make it to the library.

We have some collections- like the historical American Girl books- I have been changing our collection over from the 6 individual stories to the "collections" that contain all 6 per character in one book (still need to find 2).

I do go through books regularly (probably have 50 sitting in the "to go" pile after taking a box full to the homeschool consignment shop), as books seem to appear around here from all sorts of places (my aunt is a librarian and when books are donated to the "sale" area she picks up ones she thinks we could use, there is a local 2nd had book store that gives kids 5 free books per month, etc)

Some of my youngest's favorite stories are Little Critter, Curious George, and Bernstein Bears UGH! After reading this, not sure how to handle those leaving, but will be seriously looking into it.

Books and games are probably my hardest thing to part with, but I know it needs to happen!

[elizabeth.scalf]

W have:
16 board books, mostly picture vocab
16 Spanish reader books
13 animal magazines saved as books (needs purging)
19 story books appropriate for ages 2-4
3 compilations (Madeline and poetry)
5 picture puzzle seek and find Waldo types, not really reading
11 fact or refernec or encyclopedia type.

83 totally though not all are really reading books. The board books will be put away soon. The story books are all quality stories. The Spanish books are hard because I wouldn't keep them if they were in English but since I don't talk to them in Spanish, I keep the books for a little bit of exposure.

[photocat]

After reading this thread a couple of days ago, I left it open and went straight to our too-full book shelf and filled a bag and listed it on freecycle. I might do another bag, because so often I look up info online and we are avid library users too.

[Robin]

We got rid of a lot of books. We use the library a lot, so for the kids picture books, I pretty much only kept sentimental books. I also rotate those since they seem to get strewn all over the living room so often.
We still have a quite a few books, b/c of homeschool books (though we use the library A LOT for homeschool as well), DH & I's books (though we downsized those drastically when we moved), and some books we want to have available that the library does not have. I need to go through our books again.
My oldest DD went through a bad behavior stage at the library when she was 2. She outgrew it, thankfully. I bet your DD will, too

[TypeAMom]

Originally Posted by elizabeth.scalf The Spanish books are hard because I wouldn't keep them if they were in English but since I don't talk to them in Spanish, I keep the books for a little bit of exposure.

I do the same thing. I've got about 4 Spanish books.

Originally Posted by photocat After reading this thread a couple of days ago, I left it open and went straight to our too-full book shelf and filled a bag and listed it on freecycle.

Woo hoo!!

Originally Posted by Robin My oldest DD went through a bad behavior stage at the library when she was 2. She outgrew it, thankfully. I bet your DD will, too

Thank the heavens. I so look forward to the day we can both look at books and pick out what we want w/o screaming and messing up the library. I ALWAYS clean up everything, but I bet the library staff wishes we'd just leave.

So as an update, I did something that might help someone else. Our small, archaic library actually has its card catalog online so I purged the duplicate books as we can always check them out later. I got rid of 25 books that way.

[Nickel+3]

This inspired me and I got rid of 100 books!