Only a few more days before we vote on our favorite Bluebonnet Books!  Read five and decide!

Chat and Chew has started again; this time we are reading The Lost Planet.

5th grade has been questioning and analyzing characters in class this week; we read a story that resonated with students in the library, then discussed how the main character changed, perspective, and the surprising outcomes in the story.  The book we read was Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson; students couldn’t believe that the ending was not “neat and tidy,” but rather sad, and somewhat more true to real life.  We had great discussions as the result of this book; after we completed our analysis together, students worked in partners to read other books with great characters.

 

  

In 4th grade, we used padlet to explore different summaries of the new Caldecott winner for 2016, Finding Winnie.  The students were amazed to see their comments as they typed them appear on the screen in the library.

 

Coming back to school in January after winter break, we are hoping for the weather to finally turn cold in Texas.  We have read some great wintery, snuggly books and even built some eSnowmen, using the website abcya.com and our Chromebooks.

Our holiday activities included our winter book fair, musical books, and flashlight reading.  December was a month filled with fun and the gift of reading.  We even encouraged an at-home maker challenge of creating snowmen with recycled materials.  Our kids were so creative with their ideas!

Favorite Holiday Books

Well, as the year goes on things seem to get busy!  Here are a few of our fun fall activities and displays.

We made centerpieces for our tables with leaves about things we are thankful for about our school and library.

The decorations for our bookcases featured favorite books that we are thankful for.

These pumpkins were done in kindergarten to celebrate our favorite things about fall.  Each student wrote a sentence on an orange strip of paper, then we glued them on black butcher paper to make these awesome pumpkins.  This activity can also be done with trees or snowmen…such a simple, easy, and fun writing activity.

Our outdoor window featured thankful feathers sent home by our Whole Child Committee celebrating all of the things our students were grateful for.

Last but not least, here are a few of our favorite books from the fall.