Beginnng of October Update

October is always such a crazy month! Here's a quick update from the last two weeks:

My volunteer, Mary, and my wonderful library para, Amy, worked on getting some new Fall displays up in the windows. They are impossible to take good pictures of, but here's my attempt:

Preschool read Super Fly Guy and Ten Orange Pumpkins. They also checked out a non-fiction book for the first time. They picked an animal to read and learn more about! AK students also listened to Ten Orange Pumpkins as well as picked out a non-fiction book for the first time.

Kindergarten students listened to three of my very favorite wordless books last week: Chalk, The Typewriter, and Fossil by Bill Thomson. These books are truly magic--I mean, they have to be, to read three in a row to antsy kindergartners! 

 

This week, the kindergartners listened to a story called Aaarrgghh, Spider! and had fun screaming "aarrgghh" every time the spider appeared. After that, we followed up with a non-fiction book about spiders that made them scream, too. Ha! 

 

First graders wrote popcorn poems last week! We listed the five senses and then went through them one by one, looking, smelling, touching, tasting, and listening to the popcorn. Then, of course, they got to eat it! Here's the poem that Mrs. Huinker's class wrote:

This week, we paired a fiction and a non-fiction. We read Flood which is a wordless book and Clouds which was non-fiction. 

Second graders listened to three different versions of The Lion & the Mouse and talked about the similarities and differences between them. We talked about how the stories got passed down from long ago and how they change over time. 

 

This week we talked about the differences between fables, fairy tales, legends, and tall tales. Two of the classes read Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. Three of the classes also read Anansi the Spider. The other class had read it with their teacher. We used a chart to talk about the traits of each kind of story.

 

Third grade spent another week in Biblionasium, learning how to add books to their book shelves, and write reviews & recommendations. This week, we read The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds, which the kids had all read before. We talked about how the main character, Vashti, changes over the course of the book. Kids recorded their ideas on a whiteboard, then we recorded ideas on the board together as a class. 

Fourth grade has continued reading The One & Only Ivan. (*spoiler alert ahead*) We're going to read for one more week, then they'll read/listen to the rest during reading rotations in their classroom during literacy block. Last week, we focused on Stella, one of the main characters. We looked at some of her quotes from the book, and determined character traits based on those quotations. This past week, we read the part where Stella dies, and I choked back tears, like I do every time I read this...which I'm probably on my 30th or so reading. Whew, its tough. But, one of the things that makes this book so perfect is that you really get to know the characters, and we're working on building empathy.