2nd graders love the Bailey School Kids

I have been reading aloud "Vampire's Don't Wear Polka Dots" the first book in the Bailey School Kids Series to the second graders.  We have been learning about the 4 main characters, Melody, Eddie, Howie and Liza and of course Mrs. Jeepers.

2nd graders have been learning about subject and predicate in their reading class, so it was a perfect time to create a new book title for the series.

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Students had to come up with a subject EX: Mermaids, and a predicate
EX: don't eat cupcakes.  Then they created a book cover to go with their
idea.  The titles were very creative, I am using them to decorate the primary side of the library. 

To end the unit, we used the clickers to answer questions from the book.  It
was amazing to see how many facts the students were able to recall.
Our library has more than 30 books from the series "The Adventures of
the Bailey School Kids" and quite often these past 2 month we had less than
5 books on the shelf.  It is so much fun to get children excited about a book!

Storybook Pumpkins

Crete Elementary hosted "Storybook Pumpkins" in the library during the week of Parent Teacher Conferences October 12-15th.  Each homeroom class (grades K-4) was given a pumpkin and decided as a class what book character they would decorate it like.  The pumpkins were donated by Cliff from the College Heights Country Club from the 1st annual Pumpkin Festival which was held the week before.

Our pumpkins ranged from a "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" tree, to "Silly Sally, to "Frankenfly, to "Paul Bunyan and his Blue Ox".  The corresponding book sat right next to the storybook pumpkin.
My favorite part of the activity was when the children brought their parents into the library to look at their class's pumpkin.

Wonderful Job Crete Elementary!  I am so proud of your class pumpkins!

Read "Mo" Books

Read "Mo" Books

 I have decided to start the library year off with one of my favorite authors - Mo Willems.  Mo's books are perfect for the 2nd grade reader.  Students are able to read his books independently and they have just the right humor for a 7/8 year old.   So for the first visit of the year for both the 1st and 2nd graders I decided to share the book "We Are in a Book" by Mo Willems.  I partner read it with my aides. I read the Gerald (the elephant's part) and Michelle or Gloria read Piggie's part.  It was a blast.  The children truly enjoyed Mo's humor.  After the story, I partnered the students up with a Piggie and Elephant book and they spread out in the library to read together.  I also had a life size book that the students were able to get in and we took their picture.  It was a fun way to start the year.  My prediction is that even though I have close to 20 Elephant and Piggie books, they won't stay on the shelf long. 

Back to School 2015

Back to School 2015

The first week of school flew past, just like usual.  It was a blast to see all the children's smiling faces.  I decorated the primary case just like I did  the summer school theme "I Read, What is your Superpower?  

 Our 3 school rules continue to be a constant for the children.  "Be Safe, Be Respectful, Be Responsible"  Most children at the Elementary would be able to name those 3 school rules for you.  We are continuing to give Cardinal Compliments to those children who are following the school rules.  I have them posted in the library using the book character Pete the Cat.

In the upper case I have chosen the theme "Dear Diary". I saw this idea on Pinterest and thought I had quite a few diary books so decided to encourage students to read a few.  Mr. Shestak was gracious enough to write in cursive the Dear Diary page.  

I also bought quite a few new books over the summer and decided to display them on on the bookshelf inside.  "New and Hot" is the shelf title.  Third graders had time to browse them last week and were already excited and ready to check them out.  

 I am looking forward to a productive school year!  Books will be flying off the shelves starting tomorrow!  Happy School Year!

Be A SUPER Reader

I just finished teaching 2 weeks of summer school and we had a blast.  Our theme this summer was SuperHeroes, to go along with the City Library's Summer Reading theme "Every Hero has a Story".

My goal was to integrate literature with technology.  We started the summer off by reading the story "Superheroes ABC" The K-2 students dressed up like superheroes and we took their picture (super cute) the students told us what they were super at.  We had answers from math, and reading to Minecraft and singing.  The 3rd and 4th grade students looked up the word hero in the dictionary, then typed their own definition of what a hero is.  Another favorite book was "Buzz Boy and Fly Guy" by Ted Arnold.  The students practiced their typing the title then they illustrated it:

The older students practiced changing the font and the letter size as they were typing.  We also made our own superhero emblems, just like superman, yet they put their first letter in the middle.  Students typed what their super power would be and we glued it on the back of their emblem. 

We read the book "Salt in My Shoes" about young Michael Jordan.  Students shared some of their favorite athlete heroes.  We visited the website "Create an Superhero Athlete" by Gatorade and each student was able to create their own athlete superhero.  As the weeks go on the students will read and talk about Everyday Heroes, such as fire/police/military.  We will be typing and creating pictures to send to local heroes.  I hope the summer school students had as much fun as I did!  Now to start thinking about new ideas for fall!  How crazy is that!

NETA 2015

Today I am enjoying my second day at NETA in Omaha.  This morning the speaker George Couros brought me to tears about five times.  He emphasized that building relationships with your students is super important. These kind of conferences get me re-energized.  I have so many new tech ideas that I am anxious to try.  Too bad there are only 3 weeks left of school.  Thanks Mrs. Gonzalez for allowing me to attend!  I will be sure to share what I learned with my colleagues.

Crete Elementary celebrates Dr. Seuss' birthday

Monday, March 2nd
Today was Dr. Seuss' 111th birthday and our school celebrated by decorating our doors with the theme "Oh, the Places You'll Go".   The doors turned out amazing.  Our whole school went on a walk at 2:45 and toured the school and admired the creations.  Here is a sneak peak at some of the doors.

 

It was a fun way to celebrate and see what creative ideas the classes had.  The classes walked down through the gym to answer a few quiz like questions about Dr. Seuss or his books and received a bag with "Oh the places you'll go" bookmarks and cool swirly lollipops.  

Scholastic Book Fair = Success

Each February brings the Scholastic Book Fair to our school.  This year the theme was "Explore and Ocean of Books", so our library turned into an ocean filled with fish, sharks, squid and jellyfish.  Some of the favorite books this year were "Ranger in Time" and "Pete the Cat", of course we sold lots of Lego and Ninjago books too.  It was an exciting and busy week with lots of children enjoying wonderful books.  I was lucky to have the Crete Rotary members volunteer to help run the cash registers, they did a super job.  And the benefit to hosting the book fair is a stack of brand new books for our library!

Snow, Snow, and More Snow

As I sit at home today (our 2nd snow day this week) I decided to catch up on all the fun activities we have been doing at the Crete Elementary Library.  And since it is so snowy out,  I should share the snow activities we have done in the month of January.  Even though January was fairly warm,  we still decorated the library snowflakes and read many snow books.

 Olaf was a huge hit with all ages!  It is amazing
how many young children can sing the "Frozen"
song "Do you wanna build a snowman?

 Funny story about the large snowflake snowman by the door.
The first day I hung him up, I went to the lost and found
bucket to get a real scarf for his neck.  It wasn't but 15 minutes later and a 2nd grade student recognized his
scarf hanging on the wall.  He was embarassed to ask for his
scarf back, yet I was glad all it took to find it's home, was
to hang it on the wall.  No one has claimed this black
scarf yet.

 I collected at least 30 "snow" type books for my snow
display, and withing a few days, the shelves were empty!  That's a good thing right!!
 

We also were blessed with
a snowman collection for the month of January.  We
had over 30 named snowmen decorating our shelves.  Everything from Frosty, to Shimmer Glitter, to Sparkles, and we even had Dancing Dan.  Thanks Jeanette for sharing your treasures with our students!

Reindeer Facts

 Did you know reindeer don't have any top teeth?
Reindeer can travel in herds of up to 100,000.
Reindeer use their 2 toes to dig under the ice for food.

These are just of a few of the interesting facts that our students learned about reindeer.

As the First Graders have been exploring the non-fiction section
of our Library, we have been researching reindeer.  We used both reindeer/caribou books and the internet to gain many interesting facts.  Students then chose 4 facts that they wanted to share with others and wrote them on their "All About Reindeer" sheet.

Kindergarten Authors

One of the topics I cover with Kindergarten every year is Author/Illustrator.  Most of the time those words are new vocabulary for our students.  This year each Kindergartner was able to write/draw in their own book.  We even made an author page for their book, which included their picture and a few of their favorite things.  Books were a hit!

Run Run As Fast As You Can

The Kindergarten classes in Crete always spend a few days reading and comparing the many version of the classic tale "The Gingerbread Man".  Some chase the Gingerbread man around the school, and others create milk carton Gingerbread Houses. So to add to their fun I like to read Jan Brett's book "Gingerbread Friends" and "The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School" by Laura Murray.

       

 

Our Kindergarten students were able to decorate their own Gingerbread cookie on the computer using the webstie www.sprintsweets.com.  Eat it up, then create again.  We also enjoyed using the ipods to listen to the song/app "The Gingerbread Man"

Author David Biedrzycki Visits Crete Elementary

Our Elementary was so lucky to team up with the Crete Public Library to bring the children's author and illustrator, David Biedrzycki to our school on Wednesday, November 5th.  He spent the day in our Library giving 5 presenations, (one to each grade level K-4) and sharing his knowledge of what it takes to be an author.  David shared his new book "Breaking News, Bear Alert" with the students.  Since he uses the computer to digitally create his pictures, he was able to insert a picture of me in one of the pictures.  It was fun to see the children's expressions when they saw me sitting in the diner on one of the pages.   David was gracious and was willing to eat with a group of 4th graders, who entered and won a writing contest at our school.  Thanks to the Crete Elementary Student Council and the Friend of the Library groups for sponsoring David's visit.