Friday, December 13, 2013

Grinch in the library and much much more...


This week in the library we have been on the holiday countdown. Counting down till we see Santa next week, till we enjoy the Christmas store in the library, till we have Christmas cookies and movie day in the library, or until we have our classroom parties and or our long Christmas break. YEAH!

This week has been so much fun. We chilled out in the library and enjoyed Christmas stories and even made connections with the Grinch! Is that possible? Sure it is!!!



 

Not only did we read this story we created an anchor chart to go along with it. How might we make the Grinch smile? We came up with a lot of great ideas! My favorite was, read him a book.  See our chart.




Some of our other fun stories we shared this week. 
 
Our 3 Month Reading Challenge has officially come to an end.
  Feeling pretty accomplished that I accepted this challlenge and met it too.  I will post a final list with all my titlles next week. 


Happy holidays!

Monday, December 9, 2013

Wrapping things up in the library....

  
I missed blogging for the last week. With the holiday and being sick I have been playing catch up, both at home and at work. I completely lost my voice and felt miserable through the holiday.
I am doing much better now and I am starting to finally feel more myself.

I didn't post last week that my Kindergarten friends made a book of what they are most thankful for this holiday season. Here are a few pictures.

Madison is thankful for her friends.
Pierce is thankful for his family.

Mrs. Barrett's class received our book from Mrs. Young's class this past week and we absolutely loved getting to see it.  She wrote us an amazing letter and sent us a fun game to play. Thanks so much to our friends. We sent ours out late due to me being sick. Hope we hear back from them soon. We created a book from the photo's above.
My first grade friends finished their persuasive writing and their Pigeon/Turkey craft. I was pretty impressed at how well they all did. We also talked about "how to" make Kool-aid. As, the first graders begin their next writing activity. We talked about directions and following directions. We discussed how sometimes it is difficult to follow directions that are not clear. We talked about many things that we know how to do all by ourselves. How would we explain how to do these things to someone else. We selected a topic "Kool-aid". Many of us know how to make Kool-aid. We discussed how we could organize our directions that it might be clear to someone who has never made Kool-aid. And what a terrific job they did.

We also have been working on an author study of Karma Wilson. We shared the "Bear series" Titles like: Bear Snores On, Bear says Thanks, Bear Feels Sick, Bear Feels Scared,  Bears Stays Up For Christmas. We made lots of connections with these books. We also noticed that the book is about friendship. The books start one way and end with the friends having the same type of experience as Bear. The books are fun and are in rhyme.





 Our fact of the week was selected from the Scholastic News Book (which I highly recommend).
The kids have checked out the rest of the series and I have a waiting list on some of these titles. Fun facts for kids.

 
Our spotlight book must have been a little bit  of wishful thinking on my part. Nonetheless I really love this book. It depicts the many different things one might do on a snow day. What fun!

  I have compiled a Winter/Christmas list of books you probably don't want to miss:
 I wrapped these  books up for my grandsons to read to them this month.

Book Challenge

We are wrapping up the challenge and we have 1 week left.
December 15th is our final day of the challenge.
Did you complete it? Did you read some books you might not have otherwise read?
Well I most certainly did. It was a lot of fun. I hope you will share some of your amazing stories
and book list with me. I am on my last book. I actually turned to my son for an idea of an author with my initials and he suggested this book: Fallen By Traci Slatton

Christmas DIY Sign

Our amazing art teacher, Mrs. Holaday is providing staff with a fun holiday craft instructional. We all think she is pretty amazing. So I thought I would share my craft with you. Now because I was sick I missed the first class. Mrs. Holaday  came down to the library and told me exactly what to do so I could catch up. So here goes.

1. Select  the board the size you would like your sign to be. Sand it and put vaseline on in random areas of the board.
2. After allowing it to dry paint the board with black paint.
 
3. After allowing that to dry, put more vaseline on the black paint in random areas.

4. After allowing that to dry I painted the sign the color I wanted it to be. (Red)

5. Then I printed what I want the sign to say:

Merry Christmas  but in  Christmas Font. 

I hope it all works out, Mrs. Holaday has our next craft class scheduled for this coming Tuesday. I will continue posting my progress.



I just joined yet another swap. I actually love being involved in these different swaps. This newest one is called the Cheer up Swap! For those of you who can't wait for spring to arrive, I am right there with you!!! I really love the holidays but I dislike the cold weather. So this swap will be a fun count down to spring for me.  This one doesn't start until Feb. so sign up if you are like me and would love to meet someone new and share some swaps through the mail.
I just finished sending off my 2 other swaps I have been involved in and were they ever fun. 2 of my most favorite things Christmas and books. LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!!! I will totally unveil my reveals as they arrive. Can't wait!
As I begin to wrap up the many things going on both at home and at school, I realize how much we have going on and how much more I could be sharing. I am looking forward to the holidays and welcoming in a new year. I hope your families have a very happy holiday season.
Remember if you are lost for a gift idea, a book makes a perfect gift! :)

Happy Holidays and Happy Reading!!!
Mrs. Shamhart