The Day the Crayon's Got Back to Work

The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywat and illustrations by Oliver Jeffers

The Day the Crayons Quit is a favorite at our school! The teachers love it, the students love it, the librarian loves it!
The boy in the book named Duncan finds a stack of letters in his crayon box. It turns out the letters are from his crayons. They all seem to have some type of problem. For instance, the red crayon is tired because he is always working so hard to color all things red. He even complains about working on holidays like Christmas and Valentine's Day. So he asks Duncan for a break. All the letters are quite clever. An all time favorite is the peach crayon. His wrapper was peeled off and he is hiding in the crayon box because he claims to be in his birthday suit, if you know what I mean. Everyone is usually rolling by the time this page comes around. 

I decided to do an activity with my students after we finished this book. I told the children to listen closely to each problem the crayon had. I asked them to find a way for Duncan to solve the problem. I read the book and then challenged the kids to choose a color and write a thank you note to Duncan. The thank you note had to be written in response to him solving the crayon's problem. The letter had to be written from the perspective of one of Duncan's crayons. Finally, they could illustrate the resolution.

The kids loved this writing activity in the library!

We called it The Day the Crayons Got Back to Work! :)

Lester's Dreadful Sweaters by K.G. Campbell

This is the last week to read the 2014 Bluebonnet books. I'm conducting the voting...but not until AFTER I read this little gem to the kiddos.


Doesn't he look dreadful? I think in everyone's lifetime they may receive one dreadful something or other to be worn in public and have utter humiliation ensue as a result.That is exactly what happen to Lester.
I loved that I was able to add a little lesson on alliteration while reading this book. For instance, it all began as "Cousin Clara's cottage was consumed by a crocodile!"

After reading the book, I had the kids make a pom pom bookmark out of yarn. They loved it! Good old Pinterest gave me the idea and with a few tweaks 3rd-5th grade were able to accomplish the bookmark rather smoothly. I basically gave them a bucket of yarn and some scissors and they got after it!

Library Centers

Trying something new in the library can go one of two ways, ALL wrong or ALL right! I'm thinking adding library centers to the library is an all right! I recently went to a Library Expo in Plano and attended a session that discussed library centers. I left with loads of ideas and a new enthusiasm for the idea that I have been playing around in my head for a long time.

I decided to trial run it with one grade level. In this case, 1st grade! I chose First Grade because they have mastered the art of centers in Kinder and they are still doing them in 1st. Basically they know what's going on when I say the word "centers" and they LOVE them! In fact, when I said "Library Centers" their faces lit up and I got cheers! Yep...cheers! From that moment on I knew it was going to be great!

I started small and only with resources I had on hand.

Reading Buddies Center - The kids read books to a stuffed animal (buddy)

Listening Center - students listen to a playaway along with it's matching picture book (they love the playaways since they aren't able to check them out until they are in 3rd grade)

Magazine Center - this is another center is excited to primary kids since they aren't able to check out magazines until they are in 3rd grade

Bookmark Center - students create a book mark using stickers, markers, stencils, etc... (biggest hit) and they can take it with them

Seasonal Center - this time it was Thanksgiving Books with a Thanksgiving coloring sheet

Big Book Center - students read big books to one another (lots of teacher role playing)

All of these supplies were easy and free. Plus, I had them all. The only thing I had to do was gather it all, organize it in tubs, and put it in a central location.



The 2nd week I decided to add two more after spending just a little bit of money.

Felt Board Center - yep..you know like the felt board from when we were kids.

Puzzle Center - Floor Puzzle

I hope to switch some of the tubs out with new and fresh centers as time goes by or as they tend to become less popular.

The next question you may be asking is...when on earth do you have time to do centers, check out books, AND do a lesson? Well, quite honestly I was concerned too. But, I always read and do a lesson first. Then, the students checkout books. They checkout books remarkably fast now, knowing that the last thing they will do is have centers. Occasionally we go about 5 minutes over. I close by playing a song that indicates clean up time.

I am still a little shocked at how smoothly it has gone. I hope to start some other grade levels after the Christmas break. I'll leave you with some pictures of the centers in action!

 


 
 

KidsBlog

Staff Development days can be long for teachers! A lot of meetings! But, the flip side is I learn a lot of cool new things that can be used in the classroom. I thought I would share my new favorite thing I learned today...and I hope our students and teachers will jump on board!
Kidsblog is a free safe site for students and teachers to create a blog to interact within the classroom (and across the world). The best part about it is that students can share their thinking on what they are learning! This is basically an online reflection journal! Students can improve their writing skills, have educational discussions, learn about digital citizenship, and see their growth throughout the year. I think it's important for students to know that they can publish information for others all over the world to see! This is a great classroom tool! Let me know if you will be using it!

Check it out!

http://kidblog.org/home/

Back to School....5 weeks ago!

Man, the beginning of the year has flown by! It is already the 5th week of school! Holy Cow! Time flies when you're having fun! There is a lot of great things in store for the library this year! It's not all about the Book Fair and New Books in this library! Our 4-th, 5th, and 6th graders are already on their ipads downloading books from the digital library! Getting logged into their adobe accounts was REAL fun! Not! There has GOT to be a better way! But, hey...we conquer, we read! Done! 3rd and 4th grade have begun their S.O.L.E. research lessons! I'm super excited about that this year. I piloted it with 5th grade last year (and they loved it...I mean doesn't everyone want to know if fish feel pain?) and now it is embedded into our curriculum. Students are exploring and learning! And bi-golly they are excited about it! Yep...I said bi-golly.

Here's some pics of kiddos doing SOLE!

Counting by 7's

Counting by 7's is on the 2014 Bluebonnet Book list. I really enjoyed this one and can see it as a read aloud for 5th & 6th grade classrooms. Students tend to relate to books with kids seen as an outsider. In this case, Willow Chance is basically a genius, yet misunderstood by those around her. Willow finds unlikely friendships through a tragic experience. I enjoyed this book and if I had a classroom of my own, I would definitely be reading this one aloud! Several different scenarios are relatable for kids today. Loss of a parent(s), not fitting in, lack of friends, and adoption. This is another book in which I loved how the author made the library a place of refuge. If I ever fulfill my dream of writing a book, you can guarantee it will have a library in it. ;) Loved this book with lots of discussion possibilities! 

What were your thoughts on this book? 

The Year of the Book by Andrea Cheng

I read this Bluebonnet book over the summer and admit I wasn't super excited about it.  But, when I got done reading it, I had no regrets. This book is a great chapter book for 3rd graders, but also a good fit for 4th graders. I also think it will be great for ESL students. Anna Wang is a 4th grade girl who is Chinese. Her mother speaks Chinese but as for her she doesn't know much. She goes to Chinese School on Saturdays to learn. 

My favorite part of this book is that Anna LOVES to read and the author actually goes into a little bit of detail about each book she reads. The cool part about it is that they are REAL books and they are REAL GOOD books like A Wrinkle in Time and My Side of the Mountain. If I were reading this book aloud to a class I would have all of the books in this book on hand for my students to look at and read. That is such a great feature to the book. I love it when authors have characters in their stories that love to read! 

Anna struggles with trusting her English School friends. She has been let down a lot. By the end of the book she has a true friend that pulls through for her. 

What did you think of The Year of the Book?