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.

Ahoy Matey - Books are a TREASURE Book Fair

This was the first year for the Intermediate School Book Fair.  We hosted the Scholastic Book Fair during the week of Parent/Teacher Conferences Oct 10-13.  The theme was focused around pirates.  Of course Miss Michelle found the perfect costume to celebrate the fun week.

She was also the creator of the super cool pirate ship that was the display for the teacher's wish list. We displayed many pictures of teachers and staff at our school dressed all in pirate gear.  Some with a parrot on their shoulder and other's saying "What aaargh you reading?"
I was so excited to see our first book fair was a success.  I look forward to buying more new books for the Intermediate library.

Mercer Mayer Author Study

I introduced the author Mercer Mayer to our first grade students this fall.  We began by learning all about Mercer's life and reading a few of his first books.  We read: "There's an alligator under my bed" and also "There's a monster in my closet"  I found a video on YouTube that is actually Mercer Mayer singing and playing his guitar to the book "There's an alligator under my bed"  It is a super cute song and the children enjoyed getting to see Mercer sing.  We then began to read "Little Critter" books.  All first graders made their own "Little Critter" puppet.  On the back of the puppet we added 4 facts that we learned about the author and illustrator Mercer Mayer.

We ended our Mercer Mayer unit by exploring a few apps on the ipad about Little Critter.  Students were able to read "Just Me and My Friend" and "My trip" which are both Little Critter apps.  The Little Critter books have been a hit with our first graders.

 

Babymouse, Oh Babymouse!

 

 

The 3rd graders did a quick unit on graphic novels.  We are lucky to have a large graphic novel section at the Intermediate building and I wanted students to know where to find them.  I created a Babymouse display over in the corner next to the graphic novels.  I showed the 3rd graders the Babymouse website and gave them a chance to explore and learn more about Babymouse.  We also spent 15 minutes doing a quiet read so that students could really get into the baby mouse books, and to be honest, every since then I can not keep the Babymouse books on the shelf.  Students learned about Babymouse's friend Wilson and her nemesis Felicia.  They also had a chance to create the words to a premade Babymouse cartoon that I found on the website.  So much FUN!

Book Displays

One of my favorite things to do is advertise the books that we have at our library.  Here are a few of the displays I have used so far this year.  
At the Elementary:

"Gear up for a Good Book" is our fall front window display.  With the help of Mrs. Keck we found many different types of sporting equipment with sporty books to go along with them.

 

"ABC all these neat books?"  The other bookcase was the home for lots of alphabet books.

At the Intermediate Building:

I started the year reading the book "Don't let a ghost borrow your library book"  The book is focused around the LSS (otherwise known as the Library Secret Service)  Mrs. Faltin and I dressed as the LSS with dark glasses, an ear bud, an official badge, and blazer.  We tried to impose the importance of good book care with our students.  The students made glasses that stated a library book rule and picture. It was fun to decorate with all their decorated glasses.

 "These books BLUE me away!"  Mrs. Lauenroth helped with our bookshelf display of many new books in our library with a blue cover.  It actually was amazing to see how many BLUE books we actually had.

"If you Liked the movie, You will Love the book!"  Using some old filmstrip film and a few movie popcorn buckets we are showing off many of the books we have that are also movies.  Books such as "Because of Winn Dixie", "Stuart Little", "Diary of a Wimpy Kid", "Coraline", "Freaky Friday" and many many more.  

 

Intermediate School Up and Running

I love my job! Even though I am busy, busy, busy, I truly can say my job is the best.  Every morning I start my day at the Elementary teaching Kindergarten through 2nd grade. Then at lunchtime I drive up the hill to the Intermediate building to spend the rest of my day teaching third and fourth grade.  As a bonus, I get to spend the last 20 minutes of my day checking out books to the fifth grade.  Now that is called busy!  It feels good to have the Intermediate building feeling more like my space. At first I felt like I was teaching in someone else's classroom.  But after the first quarter I am finally feeling like it is more mine.  I labeled the library to help students know where the books are.  I started with the signs: Fiction and Non-fiction.  Then I also added: Easy, Series, Spanish, Graphic Novels and Biographies.