Martin Luther King Day of Service


Today Crete Elementary celebrated Martin Luther King's Day of Service. It was a super neat experience for the school community.  We have been gathering canned food for 2 weeks to be donated to our local food bank. We also spent part of our afternoon tying fleece blankets to be given away to families in need. Our school came together at the end of the day to celebrate our service to others.  With 150 blankets spread on the gym floor, and 1480 cans of food towering in the center our school celebrated the gift of giving.  Each student was given a t-shirt in honor of MLK. I was proud to be part of such a giving school. Way to go Crete Elementary!

Skype with Barbara O'Connor

Crete Elementary was so fortunate to have the opportunity to Skype with the author Barbara O'Connor today.  She gave an amazing presentation to our 4th grade students.  We asked many questions about the book "The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester" and then inquired about being an author.  Barbara was energetic, funny and inspiring.  We are very lucky she took time out of her day to speak with us.  Students are excited to read her new book "On the Road to Mr. Mineo's".

Golden Sower Award

In honor the Golden Sower Nominees for the Upper Grades 4-6 we created a corner display to encourage our 4th graders to read the 10 Golden Sower Books.  The sower is tossing out his seeds (books) in order to grow an amazing flower (Golden Sower Award).  I tried to encourage students to read these 10 books by giving book talks and watching a few book trailers.   Below is a list of the 10 books and their authors:

Because of Mr. Terupt by Rob Buyea

Everything for a Dog by Ann M. Martin

Familiars, The by Adam J. Epstein and Andrew Jacobson; illustrated by Peter Chan and Kei Acedera

Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester, The by Barbara O' Connor

Love, Aubrey by Suzanne LaFleur

Lucky: Maris, Mantle, and My Best Summer Ever by Wes Tooke

Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper

Storm Mountain by Tom Birdseye

Walls Within Walls by Maureen Sherry; illustrated by Adam Stower

Wildfire Run by Dee Garretson

If you go to the Nebraska Golden Sower Award site you will find lots of information about these books.http://www.goldensower.org/index.htm

Out of the whole list I successfully read 9 of the 10 books.  I am not much into fantasy books so "The Familiars" was not a favorite of mine.  I did enjoy "Out of My Mind" it brought tears to my eyes.  I chose to read "The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester" by Barbara O'Connor aloud to all my 4th graders.  It took us approximately 10 class periods to finish the book.  We learned all about submarines and bullfrogs while we were reading the book.  I contacted Barbara about the possibility of Skyping her to learn more about the book and she graciously agreed. So on Friday, Jan 18 we will visit with her over the internet.  Students had a chance to learn more about Barbara by visiting her website and watching a short author video on her.  I can't wait to share this experience with the students on Friday!

        Elmer the Elephant  By David McKee

I was very excited to received 8 paperback books all about

Elmer the Elephant from "Books Are Fun".  I decided to

create my own elephant unit focused all around Elmer the Elephant.

Elmer is a very unique patchwork elephant that is always joking and

tricking his friends.  One day he is tired of always being different and decides to trick his friends by turning himself gray like all the other elephants.  Elmer scares his friends and they say "Too bad Elmer isn't here to see this"  As the rain falls, Elmer turns back Elmer color.  So in honor of this special day, the other elephants decorate themselves colorful like Elmer and Elmer decorates himself elephant color and they have an Elmer day parade.

The 2nd grade students talked about being unique, the other way to spell it "You"nique, and how it is important to be yourself.  Then all students were able to create their own uniquely decorated elephant for our Elmer Day Parade.

We read many other books by David McKee, Elmer Again, Elmer in the Snow, and Elmer and Grandpa Eldo.  We learned about characters (Rose, Wilber, Grandpa Eldo) and talked about the different settings of the stories.

My favorite activity of our Elmer unit was reading the Pop up book titled:

It had wonderful pop-ups throughout the story.  So a perfect culmination project was for each student to create their own pop-up with 2 characters and a setting.  I had the basic cuts for the pop-up ready to go. It took 2 class periods to complete this project (1 hr total).  The first day we read the "Elmer Pop-Up Book" and colored our 2 elephants and the 2nd class period we finished decorating the scenes and added our our creative unique touches.  Many students had an owl popping out of the tree or a snake popping out of the grass.  All 120 pop-ups were amazing. Here is a look at our process and our finished products.

What a wonderful time the students had with this project.  We invited the office staff in to share in our celebration.  We read them our "Elmer poem" and took a tour of our pop-up projects.

Here is the Elmer poem Gloria and I wrote for the students;

Elmer the Elephant is funny
Elmer the Elephant is cool
Elmer the Elephant is silly
We can read about Elmer at school.

Elmer the Elephant is colorful
Elmer the Elephant is bold
Elmer the Elephant can do anything
Reading about Elmer never gets old

Book Wreath

Here I am in January trying to catch up on what happened in December.  Linda (our MS/HS librarian) and I were able to attend our ESU #6 Media Meeting in December.  As we shared ideas and talked about the possibility of e-books/e-readers in our libraries, we also tackled a cool craft.  Using an old paperback book, we cut the spine off of the book, rolled each page and hot glued it to a styrofoam or wood circle.  Depending on how the pages were rolled, each wreath turned out unique and different. I brought my wreath to school and wrapped a ribbon around it for the holidays. Merry Christmas!

Here is a link to pinterest if you would like to try it:

http://pinterest.com/pin/112308584429826873/