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Here’s how I use our library to save hundreds of dollars on our homeschool materials!
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We’re heading in to our second year using A Gentle Feast for our core curriculum and I’ve got a few thoughts on why it was so successful this year and how I plan to use it going forward.
I always have the best intentions at the beginning of the school year but I know myself too well to think that I would be as motivated and organized in February as I am in September. Knowing this about myself, I decided to put suspended holds on all the books we would be borrowing from the library for our school year. For the 2023-2024 school year I had one chid in Form 1. We did Cycle 2 and welcomed a new baby in March! I know for certain that when I am teaching multiple kids in multiple forms, this will be even more helpful.
Why did we borrow books instead of purchase them?
To save on space! I love books and we already have too many. Every time we come home from the library with a bag full of fresh books to devour, the shelves and shelves of books we already own probably groan, much like the toys in Andy’s room when Buzz Lightyear joins the crew. A new book is usually more exciting to read and this works in our favor during the school year.
To save money! I did buy some books for our school year. I choose to purchase books that either were not available at the library, that we needed for the full school year, OR books that I thought we would enjoy re-reading over time. There are several books we borrowed for the Literature readings that my daughter loved so much, she asked if we could buy a copy. Understood Betsy and Because of Winn-Dixie were her favorites from Cycle 2!
How to reserve library books ahead of time..
Knowing I would have a hard time keeping up with which books we needed each week, I decided to take some time over the summer to set up a suspended hold for each book so that they would be ready when we needed them throughout the school year.
Step 1: Plan out the weeks of your school year. These year-at-a-glance calendars from Flanders Family are my absolute favorite. I begin by marking off our break weeks for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. Next I fill in our co-op meeting dates, and then I count out 12 weeks for each term. I like to begin towards the end of August or early September and wrap up the school year by the first week of June.
Step 2: Reference your booklist. I used the Editable Booklist from A Gentle Feast in the cycle resources section. Julie includes so much helpful information in this file, including a link to any free versions of the books, which terms it is used, and additional comments about the contents for some of the books. Any book that is used for all 3 terms I typically choose to purchase. For the remaining books, I first search for them in my library’s online catalog. If the book is available in our library system, I can place a hold on the book. Then I can go back and edit the hold to be suspended until a specific date. At this point I use the weekly lesson plans to figure out which week of the term we will need the book, then I look at my master plan for the school year and schedule the hold to activate 1 week before we will need it. I do this for 2 reasons. Some of the books may be an inter-library loan so I want there to be time for the book to arrive at my local library for pick-up. I also want to give myself time to pick up the book before the day we need to read it! Throughout the school year I would get emails notifying me that a book was ready to pick up and the timing worked so wonderfully. We get each book for 3 weeks on the initial hold and then our library automatically renews the hold for another 3 weeks. I have not been more than 6 weeks off from my initial plans so this system really helped me to stay on top of having the books we needed, when we needed them!
If this all sounds really confusing, I would encourage you to ask your librarian how to make it work. The local library is an amazing resource and your librarians would probably love to help you use it!
