Book Fair is Over!

I had my first ever book fair last week! At my school we use Scholastic and have a fall and spring fair. Our fall book fair is always centered around Grandparents' day. We invite our Grandparents to school and they get to participate in many fun activities. They get to go to Chapel, visit the book fair, get their pictures taken, visit classrooms and have a light snack in our Parish Hall.

Last year our book fair profited 14,000 and some change. My goal this year was 16,000 at the conclusion of the fair yesterday I was at 17,000 and some change. I love Scholastic book fairs and can remember them from my childhood.

We participated in All for Books and donated 164.00 to an unprivileged school close by. They got lots of good new books.

I am so excited to catalog all the new books we got for our library and to get the profit in Scholastic dollars and cash.

What fun things do you do with the money you gain from book fairs? I would love to hear your ideas.

WHEW! I need to breathe

These last few weeks have been nonstop!

My author of the month is Patricia Palacco. We had fun reading My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother in grades 3-5 and talked about physical traits vs character traits. Pictures coming soon of activity.

BOOK FAIR started Thursday afternoon. We had Grandparents' day on Friday. Needless to say things are crazy at my library!

Promise to update later about all the fun we are having!

What I'm Reading

I just stared this amazing book!

Many parents and students have been buzzing about it this summer, so I am giving it a try. I am already in Chapter 4. I started this morning, but have had a class in the meantime.

I did a call number presentation today, and talked about how the call number for this book would be F, Gri. I had so many students wanting the book! I am excited to share this series with my 5th graders, as they read it and I read it too.

Library Skills and Research

Wow this new job has been non-stop CRAZY!!! We had 5 SmartBoards go out on Monday among other technology issues in the school.

5th grade has been busy doing research and learning the proper way.
We talked about how there is more to life than google and explored these fun websites.
askkids.com
kidrex.org
dibdabdoo.com
cyberslueth-kids.com

Next week they will start explorer projects. I found this awesome website to get us started out with that. http://www.livebinders.com/play/play_or_edit?id=30692
We will be learning about Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Leif Erickson and many other famous explorers.

I ordered these sets of books from Capstone to help with this. We will then move on to studying the 13 colonies.
http://www.capstonepub.com/product/9780736827614
http://www.capstonepub.com/product/9780756504670
http://www.capstonepub.com/product/9780736827591

What new resources are you using this week in your library?

Beginning of School Videos

Yesterday, I started officially my new job as the media specialist/technology directior at my school. We did an orientation PowerPoint with some fun videos. I am sure many of you have seen them, but they are still fun! My favorite is Bookloose! When we watched it today in 5th grade on of my students recognized a family member in the video.

I also used William Joyce's app Mr. Morris' Fantastic Flying books. This app is amazing if you haven't cheked it out!

Using a shelf marker! Hokey Pokey

Don't Let the Pigeon Read the Books! Book care

 

Fun for middle school! Bookloose

Help!! Footloose Video

I know someone posted this summer an awesome footloose video about the library. Now I can't find the resource. Does anyone else remember seeing this because it was awesome! Please help!

New School Year Around the Corner

With the new school year just 18 days away I went to Barnes and Noble today to get some new books! I am obsessed with children's books! I noticed we didn't have any Pete the Cat books so I bought a few. I went just to get William Joyce's new chapter books and an autographed copy of The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. William Joyce is actually from Shreveport where I teach. I used the app last year with my class. I found some great Olympic books about London and also a great series about different countries. I ended up with much more than I intended to get. Who can say no to fresh new books. Here is my collection.

To Dewey or Not??

Trying to decide whether to take the plunge and do the Dewey or not.

I love following www.librarypatch.com and seeing the way she has set things up. I think I am going to start small and just do some sections now. I want to point the students and teachers more in the general direction of where to find certain books.

These are the subject areas I find to be of importance right now. Let me know your opinion....or areas your students tend to go to more often.

Earth Science
Weather
Animals
Space
Music
Art
History
Presidents
Poetry
Sports

Love my PARENTS!!

Today a family donated 2 boxes full of books. They were great! I plan to put a nameplate in them saying the family that donated them to our library.

Not 30 minutes later our custodian came in with 3 boxes of books, another family had left downstairs for the library.

15 minutes later our secretary brought me another box full of books.

I am so blessed by these wonderful donations!

Our library has been open this summer and it very interesting to see what students are interested in. These donations helped so much. I had all of my Biscuit books checked out and then I got 5 more donated. They seemed to come at the perfect time.

Now to catalog allll of these new wonderful books!

Reading Children's Books....What is A Must?!

This summer I decided to read some of the books, I have seen my students read as a 3rd grade teacher. There are so many new series out. I read the Hunger Games when it first came out. I loved the entire series..but have not seen the movie. Now, I have several students wanting to read them. I am helping one of my former students...he will be in 6th grade next year with a project for the book. I had to refresh my memory so I am re reading it again.

I started the 39 clues seires today! I am in love! I think it would be great for 3rd and 4th graders. If they love Magic Tree House..I think they will love 39 clues. I love the library in the first book. I am wanting to make a book trailer for this book to introduce to my kids. What programs have you used for book trailers in the past? I feel like I need a step by step guide. I hope to get studnets hooked on this series.

I also pulled The Lost Hero to read this summer. I want to read a book every 2-3 days this summer that I think my students would also be interested in. I read the Lightening Thief series and loved it.

What are some must reads for you this summer or throughout the year? What are your kids loving right now, that I should add to my library?

The Library is Open This Summer

Our library is open for the summer!!

As a young child, I spend my summers at the local library doing their programs and reading books. If I ever asked for a toy, my Mom would sometimes say yes, but most often would say you can get a book. I grew up being read to, and know this is why I love reading now. I will never forget the summer at my local library when the theme was "Follow the Yellow Brick Road." My grandmother had given me the video for a holiday that year and I love Dorothy and ToTo. These characters appeared at the library that year and we read lots of Disney and fairy tale books. What little girl doesn't dream of her perfect fairy tale? Outside my public library they painted a yellow brick road...You can still see a little bit of it today almost 20 years later.

Needless, to say I was very nervous to open the library this summer! This will be my first year as the librarian at the school. I have been very very busy weeding and organizing books. Several students didn't turn in books from this previous school year. I made an incentive for children to come to the library this summer and hope to have a reading program in the future at my library similiar to "Follow the Yellow Brick Road."

Have any of you ever opened your library in the summer? What worked? What would you have changed differently?

Hope everyone is having a great summer!

What's New in the Library

As summer time is upon us..I can lay around by the pool and read when I am not straightening the library.

I have organized all the fiction books into baskets and am sorting through the Dewey nonfiction sections now. Wow did we have alot that I needed to weed. You master librarians who have been at it a while now, how do you decide what to weed and what to keep?

I will post pictures of my library soon.

I ordered several new books from Scholastic.

I would love to know what series your students are loving right now. I want to start my first linky party by having you link up and write in the comments what series are must haves!

Thanks
Kelli