Organizing The Heart of Dakota

I needed to organize the curriculum after it arrived.  Wanting to keep the years separate on different shelves, I knew I would need a system.  Since we won't be starting Creation to Christ until probably August, I needed to keep this up high... out of the reach of the three year old that has a fascination with books.   I also needed a way to label the books so that with each year that follows, I can keep them stored and organized for Megan and others I may pass or loan the curriculum to.  It will be tough to part with my slowly growing library.

First, I cleared out some of the "twaddle" (Love that word!) sitting on my shelves.  Then I made one shelf clear and completely ready for the new curriculum.  For organization, I borrowed a tip from Sonlight and labeled each year with colored tabs.  Each year will be a different color so that I can quickly tell where they go on the shelf and which year they belong to.

Preparing Hearts for His Glory got labeled with a blue 'P' that I punched out with a letter punch.  Some clear packing tape helped to seal the letter to the binding.

Creation to Christ was labeled with pink tabs.  Little Hands to Heaven was labeled with Yellow tabs.  Now that I have a bit of a system, I feel much better about my ability to keep order amidst multiple years of a literature based curriculum.  My next step is to continue to go through the books we have for the children and limit the stuff that just serves no purpose... that "twaddle".  I also have a lot of text books that are sitting in a box that I may either sell or give away.

One of the coolest things I bought from Heart of Dakota was the Sample Book Ideas from their Drawing Into the Heart of Reading program.  This list gives ideas for reading from a bunch of different genres and some wonderful book resources.  All of the books on the list are quality books that can be trusted by Christian parents not only as wholesome, but as ones that capture the readers attention.  I plan to use this list to help build a library in our home of selections that will encourage reading in my children's lives, but leave them lots of choices about what they want to read.  Eventually, other than what comes in the curriculum packs, I want to have our books separated by each genre.

Building a library such as is exciting!