How we use our local library
Using our Library Online Tools to find books for our homeschool has been awesome!Purchasing every book you want your child to read and experience can sure add up fast. Taking full advantage of your local library and their online accounts can really enhance your teaching in your homeschool. Before I started using my online account in this new way, the way I will share with you soon, it was only when I managed to get out of the house did we find books from the library, and only then it was the books that we would just find at that moment. Even if I had a list of possible books, I would ask the librarian to search for what they had at that time, if I even had that amount of time to be away from watching my three kids. This just was not ideal. It was a nice time for the kids at the library and we still do this once in a while. But now it’s a whole new world for us and our library books.With my online account, I can search for the books I need, request for them to be sent to a specific branch where we can pick them up once they arrive. My husband helps me a lot by doing the book pickups for us when they come in. This helps to keep the learning going and with Our Reading Plan for the Year, which you can receive FREE in your inbox today by Subscribing to my Newsletter. We keep a nice flow of topics coming in and I don't have to do any scrambling for the next thing. We do still request other books along the way if they find a certain interest in say, building things out of Duct Tape or more from a certain author or illustrator we enjoyed reading recently.The reading plan consists of weekly themes, which I search for unique books containing similar content for on the internet. In the end, it becomes a monthly plan of a few topics because sometimes the books don't all come in together, but I bring them out when I need them. So around 3-4 topics per month. But like any plan, there are many times that we end up skipping a topic if the kids just have no desire to hear those books because they are more interested in something else at the moment, or if we already read one or two of the same topic and they are just done now... in those times, I just put them back on the shelf and save them for next week. Or maybe not, they just go back to the library unread this time around. Even a simple renewing once more can help me see if they will eventually want to get back to that topic.
I refer to our monthly list of books at the end of each month, request those they have available and wait for them to come in. Some topics can last a week or two but I find for the more in-depth themes can last over a month or more. We hung Ribba shelves up in our homeschool space for these such books, along with a few of our own that I wish to read with the kids on a weekly basis. The kids also have Ribba shelves from IKEA and other book shelves for their books they are enjoying at bed time which also include our library books or new ones we find at our local used bookstores or Value Village. I hope that this post brings some help to you about incorporating your local library into your homeschool!
Check back soon for more posts about Our Reading Plan for the Year, where I will post the book lists for each month, along with a few related lesson and craft ideas and links to printables to bring it full circle! Also, you can read more about the tour of our Homeschool Space here in this Post.
* UPDATE, please check out our April's Reading Theme Post here.
~ Alexandra