Encouraging your child to love reading is one of the most important things you can do as a parent.  I'm sharing simple steps to help you create a home library that your family will love!

I've partnered with Brother to share Simple Tips for Building a Home Library.

What does every teacher (myself included) constantly tell parents as one of their TOP tips for helping to prepare children for school? TEACH YOUR CHILD TO LOVE READING.  We ask you to read to your children, to encourage independent reading (or book exploration for younger kids).  But the question is HOW?

One of my favorite projects as a parent was putting together our kid friendly home library for Lydia.  It makes me teacher heart proud when I sneak a glimpse of her diving into the pages of one of her favorite books.

How to Build a Kid Friendly Home Library

We actually have two home libraries for Lydia's use in our house.  When we upgraded her toddler bedroom to a princess bedroom, we built a book nook for her to use in her own room.  But more recently, we overhauled her play area in our family room.  We got rid of the toys that were too young for her, we added a new desk, and we built a home library for her to use in our common space.

A few simple tips for building your OWN home library

Think About Kid Friendly Storage: Lydia is (obviously) a lot shorter than us.  So the shelves to store her books? Need to be at her eye level.  Young children often choose books based on color and illustrations on the cover, so it's important that they are able to see the books clearly.  Remember, the point is that they can drive their own exploration and enjoy books independently!

Stock a Variety of Books: From fiction to nonfiction books, from chapter books to pictures books…..build a library that offers a variety of literature genres.  Every two years, the Children's Book Council puts out a list of great books to stock in your home library, it's a GREAT starting point.

Add Cozy Reading Spots: Want to really enjoy reading? You need a spot to cozy up with a good book and get lost in the story.  Kids need that too.  We added a mini couch to Lydia's home library, and she loves sitting on it with a stack of her favorite books (bonus, it buys me a little time to get work done around the house)!

Label and Identify Books: What do they have in REAL libraries? The books are labelled.  So guess what we did in Lydia's home library?  We added personalized labels to each book, and even added labels to the shelves so that she remembers where to put the books BACK (bonus if she cleans up her own stuff).

We just started using the P-touch Cube, and I'm not going to lie…..I'm becoming a total label addict.  This wireless label maker is Bluetooth enabled, and uses a super simple app to design and print labels from your phone. Lydia and I used it to design personalized labels for her home library (and to finally get a few parts of our house in order like her playroom and to get all her materials ready for school).  She loved picking the label color herself, and we even added cute book icons and frames!

Have you built a home library in YOUR house? What books did you add?