Book Fair Time!

 

It's Book Fair time again, and I am so excited! I absolutely love our book fair company -- Story Glory. They provide Christian-based and classical books, which both children and parents love. The books have been vetted, making me feel satisfied that I am holding to Caldwell Academy's standards and my own personal standards. Not only does Story Glory provide amazing books, they are a full service organization, providing signage, tablecloths, book stands, giftcards, cloth bags for the students' purchases, free bookmarks, and even tape for boxing up at the end of the fair. There is an online book fair in addition to the physical one, making it possible for family members who live away to make purchases for their kiddo loved ones. My represeentative is helpful and friendly and SO patient as I learned to manage the world of book fairs last year!

This is now my third fair to organize, and I finally feel ready to jump into the "decorating" a little bit more. I definitely have a long way to go. Story Glory has a different theme for each fall and spring book fair. The theme is represented in the catalogs, cloth bags, and bookmarks. There is also a special selection of theme-oriented books, The theme this fall is "Blaze New Trails; Discover New Tales." It's a camping/adventure theme. Because of my recent family night, I was ready for this one!

I also decorated for the Christmas-themed books. My dad built the tree for me several years ago, so it's nice to be able to include him in Book Fair. The Christmas books are definitely a big hit! Below are som other shots of the library this week. I've included one beginnin of set-up just to give an idea of what goes into this. 

This final picture above is something I'm trying for the first time. Each teacher selects two books for their class, and then parents can purchase them. Story Glory even provides some donation stickers to go inside the books. On Preview Day yesterday, one teacher's books were already purchased!

Below is a picture of something I started in the spring. In that fair, I only was able to get the recommendations of a couple of teachers, but this time, I got all but a couple. They each select three books to recommend, and then I make the cards using the pictures from our school website. The kids LOVE looking for their teachers' faces!

Things I have learned since completing two fairs and starting my third:

• Cover my shelves -- I have even labeled the covers by shelf-size and save them, such a time saver!
• Vary the heighth of stacks
• Have two scheduled classroom purchase days instead of one; with any additional purchase times unscheduled for the rest of the week
• Decorating is important
• Organization is key
• Accept help!
• Be flexible in scheduling--things will happen--program practices, snowstorms, delayed starts
• Enjoy the books -- there are SO many great books in my library right now that it's hard to leave each afternoon