March Madness in the Library!

This spring we had a little "MARCH MADNESS" in the library. I decorated our story corner with books about Basketball with a basketball hoop included.

We had our own book bracket hanging on the wall.  I chose 16 of a few of my favorite picture books and the 3rd graders read and narrowed down the field until there were only 2 books standing.

We narrowed it down to our 3 favorite - "Salt in his Shoes" and "Titanicat" Amazingly it came down to a difference of less than 10 votes, with "Salt in his Shoes" as the winner. We ended our month of March Madness by playing a little basketball after answering a question about our 2 favorite books.  Much fun was had by all!

We Can Help! MLK Day of Service

Ellen Miller the director of CCLC at the Elementary always plans an amazing project to honor Martin Luther King Jr. and his birthday in January.  Again this year the students worked together to tie blankets to donate to our community.  This is a huge project that includes volunteers from Doane University and community members.   Not only did we create blankets to give away, but the children participated in a canned food drive.  Both were very successful activities that taught the children to give to others. The Elementary and Intermediate schools had a convocation at the Middle school together to celebrate all we accomplished! Here are a few pictures-

READ ACROSS AMERICA Celebration March 2017

Crete Intermediate celebrated "Read Across America" by reading all around the school in some of Dr. Seuss' famous places, such as ...

The students drew a name out of a hat to let them know where in the school they were to go to read.  All students grades 3-5 were mixed up and had time to read

Students reading at the beach!

During the week we also had  fun quiz questions about Dr. Seuss where
students won prizes if they knew the answers.

Makerspace Zentangle Coloring

Before

After

One of our maker space activities in the library in January was this giant table top coloring zentangle.  My daughters helped me create 2 different life-size zentangles for the library.  It took about 3 days for each 6 ft poster to be completed.  Our students enjoyed this teamwork project. The final project was hung in our lunchroom to be admired by all.

Holiday's at the Intermediate Library

We had fun decorating at our new Intermediate Library this year.   Using many of our outdated chapter books that we brought up from the Elementary, we created a "book tree".  It was quite the hit  as it decorated our check out desk.  Happy Holidays!

I SPY

What do you do with 2 empty shelves?  Why you turn them into I SPY shelves - that's what!!

Dr. Waters, our superintendent came to visit this week and sat down for a few minutes to play I SPY with our first graders.  We put random fun items on these 2 shelves, then covered the shelves with plastic wrap (to make a glass window).  Each week Gloria has posted 4 new items to look for in our I SPY case.  It has been a fun activity to encourage new vocabulary with the students. And even better, all of our I SPY books are checked out!  That is what makes it a fun library center.

BATS are ...

The 2nd graders have been doing a mini research unit on bats.  After reading a few non-fiction bat books, each 2nd grader wrote 4 bat facts on their paper bat.  I had facts that ranged from "Bats sleep upside down." to "There are 1,200 kinds of species of bats." and even "Bats have 4 fingers and 1 thumb."  Our paper bats are currently roosting in 3 spaces in our non-fiction section.

 Our final activity was to read the book, "Stellaluna" written by Janell Cannon. Then we watched the 10 minute education video (on the Stellaluna DVD) titled "The not so scary world of bats"  It really gave the students a real look at bats.  My favorite memory of this unit was when the Kindergarners were lining up and I said "Remember to be quiet, the bats are sleeping."  It got real quiet as they looked up to the ceiling.  Then one students asked "Are they real?" 
Way to cute.