Our PTO organized our first bookswap last fall and it went extremely well. We notified parents about a week before boooks were to be accepted. We took one whole week, at arrival and dismissal times, to accept books for the swap. Every child's name, teacher and titles of their books were recorded. The kids could bring up to 3 titles each. The next week, we had the teacher's sign up to bring their children down for the swap. All students were asked to come to the swap, regardless of whether they participated or not. Besides the books that kids brought in, we went to our public library and raided their supply of donated books and used them as extras. This way every student got to choose at least one book. We recorded each particpating child's name on a bookmark with the amount of books they could pick out from the swap. They got to choose their books and then the kids who didn't bring a book to swap got to choose one book from the ones that were left. Every bookmark was stamped upon exiting the swap after someone counted to make sure that each child only took the # of books that they brought in. The extra books from the library were a great help because alot of the older grades had little participation and the kids who brought in their books would have had a very limited selection. For dispalying the books, we just took cafeteria tables and labeld k-2 and 3-5 and placed the books on them accordingly. We also disposed of some of the books that were falling apart and written in. I hope this doesn't sound too confusing. It really was easy to run. And you don't need alot of volunteers. Good luck!

I know a lot of people at my kids' school have aquired lots of books over the years that their kids have read and/or outgrown. It would be neat if we could arrange a book swap, but I don't know how that would work. Has anyone else done something like this? Details, please!