Week of January 23

This week our recess clubs enjoyed playing with Dash robots. Dash is my favorite elementary-friendly robot, and the kids love him too! It's fun seeing kids who wouldn't necessarily hang out all working together to program Dash. There was teamwork, problem solving, music, math, and coding all while having tons of fun!

As promised, our AK & Preschool students listened to a Pigeon book. All of them were checked out of the library, of course, so we watched the Bookflix version. The kids thought it was pretty funny!

Our kindergarten students listened to Goldilocks & the Three Bears and then did a gummy bear science experiment. Each class mixed up 6 water solutions: sugar, salt, vinegar, baking soda, lemon juice, and plain water, then dropped a gummy bear in. The next day, they looked at the gummy bears to see how they changed in size, color, and shape. Sadly, I don't have any pictures of the gummy bears after sitting in the solutions.

First graders read our first book from the Iowa Goldfinch Award list: Red: A Crayon's Story by Michael Hall. We will try to read as many books as possible from the list over the next few weeks. After reading, students are reflecting on the books in the Seesaw app. Since it was the first week, students used the app to draw their favorite part of the story. 

Second graders celebrated the end of our Mock Caldecott project by reading two of the Caldecott honor books. The awards were announced on Monday morning and I put the stickers on our books Monday morning, too! That was fun! We had predicted They All Saw a Cat to win, but we didn't pick any of the others. Kids really liked Du Iz Tak? and Leave Me Alone! when we read them. A volunteer put out all of the previous winners for kids to check out, and many of them were taken! 

Third graders continued working on their biography slideshows--next week we'll add pictures during computer lab and citations during library. Then hopefully I'll have some examples to share!

Fourth graders finished up their scripts and images for our book trailers. Next week, we're moving into WeVideo. Just a few more weeks until we have final products! I love seeing how these come together!

Week of January 16

With no school on Monday, we started recess clubs on Tuesday. This week, kids enjoyed making Rainbow Loom bracelets and necklaces.

I also got the results from our 2nd grade Wonder League Competition. Out of over 5,000 teams, only 33% finished, and all 8 of our teams finished! That in itself is a huge accomplishment. We also had 2 teams that had perfect scores, tied for best in Iowa, and made it to the finals! They get to start on another mission next week. I am so proud of all of these kids! Here's a picture of all of us, along with their certificates of completion for finished all 8 missions! What a fun group of kids!

As promised, preschool & AK students enjoyed another Elephant & Piggie book--this week was Should I Share My Ice Cream? The kids love finding the pigeon at the end of each book. Next week we'll be on to a pigeon book! I might have to show them some of my pictures from the Mo Willems exhibit at the NYC museum last summer!

                                                      

Kindergarteners read Little Red Riding Hood. After reading, we discussed ways that Little Red Riding Hood could've delivered the picnic basket to her grandma without having to cross through the woods and meet the wolf. They had lots of great ideas! I had pre-built a "zipline" ahead of time out of Duplos, string, and a paper clip. Students worked by themselves or with a buddy to build a picnic basket out of paper, pipe cleaners, and tape. Kindergarteners and tape seemed like a good idea, right? We definitely had some fun!

                                      

First graders read a book about sound called How Sound Moves by Sharon Coan. They have been studying sound in science. 

After reading, students used LittleBits circuits and Snap Circuits to make sounds. It was fun to hear kids use the words volume and pitch which is what we learned about in the book! I am the least qualified person to teach science, but these resources make it so easy!

Second graders listened to the last book for Mock Caldecott and voted for their favorite. We finished up by reading We Found a Hat by Jon Klassen.

The results of our vote looked like this:

The Night Gardener by the Fan Brothers won first place, with Are We There Yet by Dan Santat, and They All Saw a Cat by Brenden Wenzel were 2nd & 3rd. I can't wait to hear the Caldecott announcement tomorrow and to share with the kids next week! We're going to have a little party to celebrate such a fun project!

Third graders continued researching their famous person for their biography presentation. This is the first big research project we've done and these kids are working really hard reading, synthesizing, organizing, and summarizing information! Whew!

Fourth graders are almost finished up writing their scripts and finding pictures. Next week we'll get started with WeVideo.

                                   

Week of January 9

On Monday, we kicked off our 3rd & 4th grade recess clubs! Students are allowed to sign up for a week where instead of going to recess, they come to the library to hang out and do some sort of activity. This week, we explored with Snap Circuits and LittleBits Circuits. It was totally fun!

Our preschool students read an Elephant & Piggie book called A Big Guy Took My Ball. As it turns out, this is the first Mo Willems book we've read this year! Who is their librarian, anyway?! I'm sure she will be correcting this ASAP. Our AK students also enjoyed an Elephant & Piggie--Today I Will Fly

Kindergarteners continued with our study of fairy tales by listening to The Three Little Pigs. We talked about how there are many different versions of each fairy tale, and  how fairy tales begin with "once upon a time" and end with "they lived happily ever after." 

After reading the story, the students tried building their own houses out of different materials. Then the big bad wolf (aka, a pink desk fan) came along and tried to blow the houses down. Kids built houses of popsicle sticks, dowels, bundles of plastic straws, cardboard, or Legos. We had tons of fun!

First graders are studying light & sound during science, and this week in library we had fun making circuits that make light after reading a book called Light Helps Me See by Jennifer Boothroyd. I am very thankful that our AEA offers so many great ebooks to check out!  

They had fun using the Little Bits & Snap Circuits to build light switches! With the Little Bits we built dimmer switches. Kids could relate to the regular switches and the dimmers, because so many have them in houses or know someone else who has them. Who knew it was so easy to build them! We are so lucky to have these tools.

Second graders are so close to finishing up our Mock Caldecott unit. We read two more books this week, Maybe Something Beautiful and The Night Gardener. We will read 2 more books next week and vote for our favorite! The ALAYMA awards are announced Monday, January 23. ALA will be broadcasting it via Facebook Live, which is so exciting to me! I wish it was a little later, so the kids could watch too, but it will be over by 9 when kids get to school. 

 

In computer lab, the 2nd graders drew and wrote about something they could do to make their community more beautiful, just like in the two books we read. I love how books encourage empathy and relate to our real lives. Our kids had so many great ideas!

Our 3rd graders started a slideshow for their biography project. They got a title slide and a slide about childhood started. We used books to find facts! Let the learning begin! 

4th graders finished writing their scripts for their book trailer--video creation will start soon!

We're looking forward to another great week!