Why do YOU like reading?

I posed this question to my 2nd and 3rd graders today.  I can't wait to make a display of all their wonderful answers!  Here is my favorite:

(because there are fun adventures that make your brain happy).  Did that make everyone else happy in their teacher hearts???

My other favorite was one of Michelle's 2nd graders who said reading is important "because it gives you knowledge and knowledge is power".  I should have taken a pic of his very creative spelling of knowledge :)

Dr. Seuss's Birthday Bash, Part 2

Here are some of the things I did during library classes to celebrate our Dr. Seuss's Birthday Bash: 
I made a bulletin board to showcase students' work from the week: 

At the Dr. Seuss Facts Center, students researched facts about Dr. Seuss and wrote them on the clouds: 

They also wrote favorite books on the Truffula trees and drew their favorite characters to add to the bulletin board.

I set up a Wacky Words Center so they could create their own words like Dr. Seuss often did: 

 Here are two of my favorite wacky words:

Fifth graders were responsible for creating advertisements for Dr. Seuss's Birthday Bash and did a fantastic job:

 I used some of my regular centers during the week but Seuss-ified them: 

I also have a blog for students.  Every week, I post a "Guess the Word Cloud" and of course did a Dr. Seuss cloud. (Sidenote: if you haven't checked out Tagxedo, you should!)

My favorite activity of the week was the We LOVE Reading photo booth.  I put together a basket of Dr. Suess props and covered my ancient, broken SmartBoard with a background.  Students had to find their favorite book or Dr. Seuss book to use in the photo booth.  If I didn't have the book in the library, they wrote the title on a small whiteboard.  They had such a good time!  I'm waiting for the printed pictures to come from Snapfish but as soon as I get them, I will be making a big display of readers and their favorite books!

 

 

Note to self - next time, make the background lower for my shorter readers :)

Dr Seuss's Birthday Bash, Part 1

Like I said before, Dr. Seuss's Birthday Bash made for a very busy week!  But it was also so much fun!  Here are a few fun activities we did as a school.  I'll be back later this week to talk about a few library centers and activities I did with the kids to celebrate.

Reading Hats: students and staff were each given a Dr Seuss hat to "fill" with books they read during week.  The teachers displayed them in many cute ways in the classroom and out in the halls.

Red, White, and Black Day:  students and staff dressed in black, white, and red, along with Dr. Seuss style hats.  The kinders made paper hats - so cute!  At least one class also did Wacky Wednesday, which would be so fun to do school-wide.  Dress up days really help create a celebratory feeling in a school.

Guest Readers: classroom teachers had parents come in to read to their classes.  Our Superintendent also came to read to a K class!

Fun Facts: Some of my 5th graders pulled together a few facts about Dr. Seuss  to be read over the announcements each morning.

Staff Breakfast: we had a lovely staff breakfast one morning.  I made these banana-strawberry skewers, originally seen on Pinterest (of course!) that look like red and white striped hats.  I used blue toothpicks so they were shorter (maybe 5 pieces of fruit) but still very cute.  

This was the first time I've done a Dr. Seuss birthday celebration.  I had a wonderful literacy aide who co-planned and came up with some of the activities we did as a school, such as red, white, and black day.  It's much easier when you have someone to help coordinate multiple activities!


Overall the week went very well.  The only thing I would do differently would be to start preparing earlier next year.  The week snuck up on me and it would have been great to have a more coordinated guest/mystery reader program set up in advance.  Also, copying 500+ student hats plus all those for our staff and writing names on them was very time consuming!  I waited until the week before to do all of the hats and wouldn't have finished them if it weren't for a parent volunteer, 4th grade helpers, and an aide!  


What are some fun school-wide activities you do in your school to celebrate Read Across America or Dr. Seuss's Birthday?

Whew

I was SO BUSY last week with Dr. Seuss's Birthday Bash that I have been terrible about blogging.  So sorry!  


We celebrated this past week even though it was after Dr. Seuss's real birthday.  The week of his birthday was right after our winter vacation.  I thought it would be hard to prepare for the week and get everyone fully on board if they had to jump into our week of activities following vacation (no one is jazzed about coming back that first day!).  It worked out great for our school and I think it was a pretty successful first run!


Here is my friend and 2nd grade teacher, Michelle, celebrating in my reading photo booth: 

Michelle (in pink) is a super sweet southern girl with a fabulous blog, My Book of Love.  It's not about elementary libraries but you should check it out for a brain break :)


I'll be back later with some fun school-wide activities we did this week!

Order in the Library

**Update: the bad news is Order in the Library was taken offline in 2012 but the good news is Mr. Lodge made Shelve-it, a game to practice shelving books.

I've been doing a little research into what happened to Order in the Library.  I'm SO sad it appears to not be online anymore.  It was such a great way to introduce library organization and have students practice shelving.  They loved my Order in the Library center!  

I found a few people are able to continue using it through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine which archives websites.  The link I found that works (for now!) is this one.  

I have also seen some talk about the disappearance on list serves such as LM_Net but no solid information about whether it will be restored.

Such a bummer :(  Hopefully the Wayback Machine link will work okay for now.

Truffula Trees Part 2

I have had a crazy week getting ready for our Dr. Seuss Birthday Bash, I haven't had time to post pictures of my Truffula Trees in the library!  Although Dr. Seuss's birthday was yesterday, we are celebrating all next week with reading activities.  I'll post some of the fun things we do at the end of the week!
Anyway, here are some pictures of the Truffula Trees in the library.  The kids loved them and they make the library much more colorful so it was well worth the time spent making them.  I put them all around, although I think it would have also been fun to have them all in one area and have a Truffula Forest.  

I duct taped them up for now.  A few trees I made with heavier tissue fell so I stuck them back up with a few extra pieces of tape...we'll see if they stay up this time!