Freebie: Book Bin Labels

 A little background: My first year teaching I taught 2nd grade and basically had my entire classroom lined with book bins. I loved this system, and I loved the fact that my kids had access to so many good books. However when I moved to kindergarten there was just so much other stuff filling my space that I just didn't quite know how to handle my massive collection of books. I also wasn't sure about trusting five year olds to handle putting books back in their proper places. So sadly for the first two years I taught kindergarten many of my books stayed on my teacher book shelf and only came out for read alouds.

So last summer I decided to bring my books back into the spotlight and give them the opportunity for much needed love they so badly deserved. I wanted a easy way for my students to access the books but also for them to keep them organized. I ended up sorting the books by categories and genres. I ended up with four main categories (fiction, non-fiction, favorite authors, favorite friends/characters) which were then divided into lots of other sub-categories.  Each of the big categories was assigned a bin color: red for non-fiction, blue for favorite friends (like Clifford, Spot, Curious George, etc), yellow for favorite authors, and blue for fiction. I labeled each box with a picture label and then each book within the box a small sticker. It was a lot of work but sooooo worth it! The kids did amazing at keeping the books in their designated bins (we called it the book's home).  Here's some pics from my classroom library (sorry if there's some repeats from my tour post!)

Update: I combined all the label documents into a single document and uploaded it to google documents. For some reason during the merging process an extra blank page was inserted between every page (boo!)...it was too frustrating to try and remove it so I just left it for my own sanity! Sorry! Hope you enjoy these labels and can put them to use in your own libraries!
Book Bin Labels in Google Docs

These are our favorite friends bins. They house our Clifford, Spot, Arthur, Franklin, Berenstein Bears, etc. collections.

These are the only bins that do not have sticker labels on the books or bins because the kids were able to match the characters really easier with their correct bins.

Our fiction section. These books are historical fiction, silly stories, animal characters, ABC books, etc.

The stickers on the upper right of the bin label are on each of the books in these bins. The kids loved matching the stickers to find the home of each book. I just used small reward stickers from the teacher supply store that I had lying around.

Non-Fiction Section: By far the most popular in my class. =)

Where ripped books go.

Another look at the non-fiction bins. See the sticker labels?

Favorite Authors Bins: Eric Carle, Dr. Seuss, Lois Ehlert, Jan Brett, Tedd Arnold....all live here.

So as a small token of thanks for all the wonderful ideas and printables I've "borrowed" from all the amazing teacher blogs out there I wanted to offer up my first (hopefully of many) printable to blog readers. I would love to hear your comments (or even better follow me!).  Not sure how these will post as pictures- let me know if you have trouble opening them!

Happy Organizing!
Jessie

PLEASE NOTE THE PICTURES BELOW ARE NOT THE ACTUAL DOCUMENTS!! IF YOU CLICK ON THEM THEY WILL OPEN AS A PICTURE FILE! CLICK ON THE LINK ABOVE TO DOWNLOAD THE PDF FILES!!