Did you do anything for National Library Day? I attended a talk about architecture in our town that was quite interesting, but perhaps not so exciting for children. So instead we worked on a craft that they can use when we visit the library. Last week Kallista and I each made a bookshelf marker.
What are bookshelf markers, you ask?
You know how frustrating it is when you take a book of the shelf at the library (or at home if you like to keep your books in order). The surrounding books shift and you spend time then trying to find out where your book belongs in the Dewey Decimal system organisation. Lots of time can be spent trying to put books back on the shelf in the right order so that the next person looking for that book is able to find it.
And if your children are younger and aren’t yet familiar with these book systems, you don’t want them just putting books back on the shelf willy-nilly! Bookshelf markers are just the thing to save you the hassle of looking for where to re-shelf your book.
Simply place your bookshelf marker onto the shelf as your pulling your book off of the shelf. It will mark your spot. When you’re finished looking through your book and you want to replace it on the shelf simply find your personal marker and place your book right back where you found it! Brilliant!
I can’t take credit for these markers; we made similar ones way back in elementary school. Can you imagine what the shelves look like with a whole classroom’s worth of bookshelf markers poking out from between the books? It’s quite a sight!
Back in school, the markers were simply pieces of coloured construction paper with a drawing on it and then laminated. And of course those worked wonderfully. But us being us, we decided to get a little fancier with ours.
I found some photo mounting board scraps left over from a couple of years ago when a framer came down to the Camera Club to show us how to mount photos. I managed to save a few of the off-cuts as you ‘never know when they could come in handy.’ Do you ever do that, too?
Kallista and I each chose a piece that we liked. I chose a nice big piece for the bigger shelves, and Kallista chose a smaller piece of board that will be great for smaller bookshelves and for at home.
Last year I won a competition by a craft company and the prize was a packet of Roald Dahl papers and decoupage pieces. I brought these out as they fit our reading theme perfectly. We cut our papers to fit the boards, and then used double-sided tape to attach the papers to the boards.
Then we added some pieces on top to make our markers more interesting. I chose a Roald Dahl quote:
mystic and marvellous surprises that will entrance, delight, intrigue, astonish, and perplex you beyond measure
And nothing would be complete in our house if we didn’t add some glittery tape and stickers as well!
Now we can have more time to read and relax at the library instead of looking for where books go back on the shelf!
And just as we’re thinking about National Library Day, I thought I’d share a photo we took at the event last year:
I’m not sure if even one of our bookshelf markers would be able to keep the place of a book removed from this stack!
And if you’d like to get into some fun paper crafting, here are some of our essential tools:
