Books at the Breakfast Table

Zoe Toft at Playing by the Book shared a fun post a couple of weeks ago about sneaking in books at breakfast by using toast racks as book storage. I was immediately charmed by this idea, and had to try it myself. Toast racks are more common in the UK, where Zoe lives, than they are here in California, but I was able to find one on Amazon. This rack, stocked with some of our books, is shown to the left. After filling it, I placed it on my kitchen table, next to where my daughter (age four) usually sits.

I'm pleased to report that the book rack has been a hit. My daughter is not reading on her own, and she has lately shown reluctance to even look at books by herself. She wants to be read to, and that's that. So, she won't pick out books from the book rack and flip through them herself while she is eating breakfast, which would have been my first choice.

However, having the books there in front of her all the time has prompted her to ask to be read to more often. During breakfast or lunch, or after dinner (because I draw the line at actually interrupting dinner to read to her), she'll ask for a book or two or three from whichever adult is most handy. Since the outcome has been that we read more books to her, I will call this experiment a success. But now I'm going to have an extra task to restock the rack every few days...I am getting a bit tired of Glasses for D.W.

What storage techniques have you used to keep books accessible to your kids? 

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