Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Happy Birthday!

Two of my favorite people have new books coming out TODAY!

Matt Tavares' new book, Over The River And Through The Wood is a beautiful picture book of the song we all know, Matt also included some background information on the song that I didn't know about! I just love the book trailer!



Laurel Snyder's new book, Bigger Than a Bread Box is about divorce, Bruce Springsteen songs, Baltimore, Atlanta and a magic bread box.  It is SUCH a great book, and I am not just saying that because she is a friend and because at her book party on Friday night at Little Shop of Stories in Decatur she is serving TastyCakes (butterscotch krimpets - YUM!) I gave the book to a 5th grader on Friday, she read the book this weekend and had the BIGGEST smile on her face Monday morning when she came in to tell me she loved it - she keep stopping me in the halls telling me more about what she liked about it!



There is also a slew of other great books out today - check out a list and book trailers at Kid Lit Frenzy.

Who says kids books are dead???

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

International Dot Day at Rock Springs

International Dot Day at Rock Springs

Check out the animoto video of all the FUN we had in the Media Center last week celebrating DOT DAY!

Monday, September 12, 2011

Time flies when your having fun...

I can't believe we are starting week six of the school year - it seems like it should only be week two or three!

I have been busy in the media center and here are a few things we've been working on:

I've been working with all five 5th grade classes on a big civil war research/technology project - we are almost done with the research and are ready to get going on our multimedia projects and get our Wiki up and running.
I am having my 2nd graders learn a little bit about the world of Roal Dahl and one of my 2nd grade classes decorated peaches to Follow that Peach - we have sent our decorated peaches to Van Meter, Iowa as part of a multi school project - the students are so excited to see where their peaches are going! Here is a blog that the schools participating will be posting to.

Today we started celebrating Dot Day (which is actually on Thursday). I have loved the book The Dot by Peter Reynolds for years, so when I heard about Dot Day from my friends Shannon Miller and John Schu I knew I had to do something.  Today I showed my 3rd grade technology class the TumbleBook of The Dot then the kids made their own Dots using the program KidPix.  Tomorrow I am going to show my Kindergarten classes the TumbleBook and I am also going to read them the book New York's Bravest by Mary Pope Osborne. We are going to talk about heroes and how people leave their mark on the world.  Then the kids will create their own dot with paint and crayons and markers.
And finally, today I had my first Club Click meeting. Shannon Miller and Diane Cordell started Club Click last year at Shannon's school Van Meter - well a bunch of us joined in on the fun this year and started clubs in our schools.  My club is an after school club for fourth and fifth graders.  We will learn about digital photography, share photographs with the other schools and learn how to use digital photography to tell a story. The kids were very excited today and they started taking photographs of our school to introduce our school to the other members of Club Click.

I also had a few costumes already this year - the first one was for a little video I created for an in-service meeting of media specialist for our county - I am SUPER LIBRARIAN and my tag line for the video was 'Even Super Heroes Need Capes" this was in reference to the fact that we all need mentors and a PLN (personal learning network) to rely on as we try to be the best librarians/media specialists we can be!


And my next costume was for a contest author Jarrett Krosozka (and fellow Worcester, MA native!) was holding for the book release of the latest Lunch Lady book - Lunch Lady and the Field Trip Fiasco.  Even if I didn't win, it was worth it to see my 13 yr old daughter absolutely MORTIFIED by me dressing up in the middle of downtown Atlanta (she was my photographer)!  I kept telling her it could have been worse and I could have worn the cape too!


It's been a busy first six weeks and a great, if not hectic, start to our year!