1. Lessons taught these two months included:
- PreK: Pets, Animal Patterns, Animal Movement, Animals Change, Seuss.
- K: Adopted Author Jan Brett, Letter L, Letter U, 100 Days, Letter R, Letter Y, Letter X, Seuss.
- 1: Adopted Author Barbara Park, Point of View, Mark Brown, Cinderella Stories, Seuss.
- 2: Adopted Author Cynthia Rylant, Point of View, Bill Martin, Jr. Award, Seuss.
- 3: Adopted Author Beverly Cleary, Dewey Decimal System/Scavenger Hunt, Seuss.
- 4: Adopted Author Mary Downing Hahn, Famous Kansans, Dewey Decimal System/Scavenger Hunt, Seuss.
- 5: Adopted Author Will Hobbs, Dewey Decimal System/Scavenger Hunt, Motivational Survey, Seuss.
- 6: Adopted Author Gary Paulsen, Dewey Decimal System/Scavenger Hunt, Motivational Survey, Seuss.
2. Our 100 Days celebration with kindergartners is always fun. We read the book !00 Days of School then reenact part of the story: counting 100 pennies and trading them in for a brand new $1 bill!
3. Fourth grade researched Famous Kansans in January and then dressed up to represent their character and present their reports for their families in a special Kansas Day celebration. The kids really did a nice job and then we sang Happy Birthday to Kansas and served birthday cake!
4. Since the beginning of January we have had a Visiting Author Challenge to read a defined number of her books depending on the student’s grade level. So far I have 17 students who have met the challenge and will be invited to breakfast with Diane DeGroat when she visits AE. Students have been ordering her books as well, to have autographed during her visit.
5. We had a guest speaker the short week of conferences. Charlene Patton from the Kansas Baking Association is a cookbook author and talked to the kids about how to measure accurately for recipes, how to knead dough, and demonstrated a cookie recipe. She had lots of handouts and samples of chocolate covered soy nuts for everyone. My library theme this year is “Traveling Across the USA” so she also talked about collecting recipes from different parts of the country and showed off our new regional cookbook set.
6. We celebrated Seuss in style on March 2. Mrs. Patterson read Green Eggs and Ham to the whole school during our annual Seuss Assembly. The students wore crazy hats and had a Seuss menu for lunch including birthday cake. The Roadrunners Hockey Team joined us to help celebrate with their mascot Reggie, and brought ticket coupons as well as bookmarks for free Cold Stone ice cream! AR even got in on the celebration with “Read The Most,” their attempt to break the record of the number of quizzes taken in one day. Many of our students participated, collecting bookmarks and smashing the old record to set a new one: 3, 581, 992 quizzes taken in one day! In the library we celebrated all week long, reading The Lorax before the movie premier, making hats, and playing a Seuss trivia game.
7. Friday mornings during B week, I have been doing an extension class with 2nd graders. They finished up their alphabet books in January and did a fantastic job. Now we’re trying to decide what to do next!
8. As far as circulations go, in January, 5638 books were checked out and 371 holds placed. In February, 4847 checkouts and 299 holds. Our top two books for this period were Wimpy Kid with 40 circulations and Dog Days with 30 circulations.
In March, have the Topeka Public library coming to teach students and parents how to download free books to their ereaders which they can now bring to school. There is always plenty to keep us busy!
Helen
