Veteran's Day

This week is book fair and all the craziness that comes with it, but last week and next week I am reading a story for story time that I just love (and WARNING.. it might bring tears to your eyes as you read it) and am a doing a project to celebrate Veteran's Day.

The book is The Imposisble Patriotism Project by Linda Skeers. The book is about a boy who is not too happy about a President's Day project that his teacher has given the class, create something about patriotism. He goes about asking his classmates what they are doing (a paper mache liberty bell, a map of the US, dressing up as the Statue of Liberty) and is still stumped. He finally has an idea at home while looking at a picture of his Dad, who is not at home at the moment. I won't give away the ending, but it is a bit of a tear jerker.

Before I read the book, I talk with the class about what Veteran's Day is and what a Veteran is and also about what Patriotism is. After the story the students are writing/drawing letters to Veteran's with the kids. I have two different templates, one for my Kindergarten students who will be drawing a picture and one for my students in first grade and up who will be writing a thank you letter to our Veteran's and our active service people. Since I see so many students, I am giving these thank you's to a variety of places. I have a few Veteran's that I know (some from WW II) that I will be giving a few letters to. I also have an address for an active army unit that I will be sending some of these to and I will also be dropping some of these off at the Veteran's Hospital in Atlanta.

Today on our schools morning announcement show I showed this video of my son interviewing my grandfather, a WW II vet and purple heart recipient. The funniest thing about this - one of my third graders asked his teacher if my grandfather was from a different country because he sounded like he was - the teacher replied "No honey, he's just from Boston!"

And one good thing about having book fair this week - look what we got in yesterday at the book fair!!!

Getting Ready to Deck the Halls

So it is that time of year again, I almost drove off the road last night when I passed the local library and it was all decked out in Lights! Garland! Wreaths! yep I guess November has been forgotten and we are right into the holiday season. But then again, this reminded me that I do have to get going on those kind of holiday things - gifts, decorating, holiday story time (I am still deciding this one) and a gift of appreciation for my volunteers. I don't have a whole lot of volunteers, but the ones I do have are FABULOUS and I want them to keep coming back.

Taking a que from some of my teachers who have cards made of their class, I decided to make some cards specific to the media center this year. Shutterfly has some great options for photo Holiday cards. I am thinking of taking a nice picture of my clerk and I in the library, maybe with some props and creating a Holiday/thank you card to send to my volunteers. I have picked out this card because I can include quite a bit of type on it.

Shutterfly also has some great gift ideas, I do a calendar every year for my mom with pictures of all her grandchildren in it - this proves more difficult every year because my siblings keep having new babies every year, but it is now something that is EXPECTED of me. I was thinking of a way I could do one of the smaller calenders for the media center - maybe give these away to my volunteers - would it be too forward of me to circle in red their volunteer days (ha ha).

You can take a look at all the holiday cards and other gifts that Shutterfly has to offer - and until TODAY (11/3) when you order one calender, any others are 30% off (but hurry!!)

Calling all bloggers! You can receive 50 free greeting cards from Shutterfly http://bit.ly/sfly2010

This post is part of a series sponsored by Shutterfly. I was selected for this sponsorship by the As Cape Cod Turns, which endorses blog with integrity, as I do.