Preserving School books

This will be my final installment of "Back to Home School" posts but I will be sharing plenty from our school year as the year goes on.  :-)

Prior to organizing our school books, I protect them. We use My Father's World curriculum which means we use lots of living books. Those living books can add up and be expensive to replace. I take steps to keep them in good condition as long as possible. The first step in preserving our books is keeping them out of the hands of our littles. This is the hardest part. All of our school books are stored in our store room which has a locked door knob. Only readers are allowed to get books out of the store room. As we need the books we bring them to the living room bookshelf. They are placed in our "book basket" that is out of the reach of the smallest kiddos.

The other step I take to preserve our books is placing tape on the binding and edges.

First, I order my supplies. I use clear packing tape, scissors and dots for color coding.

I begin by placing the color dot that corresponds with year of study.

Then I place a piece of packing tape on the top of the book near the spine. I smooth the tape down and then wrap it around the spine and the back cover.

The next step is to repeat the tape process on the front and back covers. I line the tape up on the outside of each cover and then wrap it to the inside. I use my scissors to trim the edges and remove the excess tape.

The final product are paperback books that have their covers reinforced. The color coding stickers are protected and can't fall off. I also use this method to repair spines and covers that are damaged when I purchase books used {the majority of our school books, I do purchase used}.

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