Brothers at Bat

..from Amazon.com: "The Acerra family had sixteen children, including twelve ball-playing boys. It was the 1930s, and many families had lots of kids. But only one had enough to field a baseball team . . . with three on the bench! The Acerras were the longest-playing all-brother team in baseball history. They loved the game, but more important, they cared for and supported each other and stayed together as a team. Nothing life threw their way could stop them.

Full of action, drama, and excitement, this never-before-told true story is vividly brought to life by Audrey Vernick’s expert storytelling and Steven Salerno’s stunning vintage-style art."

This is the first "Red Clover Book your children will hear. There will be 9 others! They will be introduced to the title, do an accompanying activity and will vote for their favorite in the spring.

There is more about the Red Clover Program, and details about the 10 books on this site.

We are winding down with the introductory lessons for the Kindies and will be moving back to a 40 minute block beginning next week. Seeing your students twice a week has enabled me to reinforce the circulation procedure in the library a well as teach successive lessons about book care and other preliminary expectations.

Your children are doing a fine job remembering their library books-- this should be easier when their library day is "fixed" beginning Monday.

Pale Male

Pale Male is the Citizen hawk in New York City. There are several books about this hawk, in the city since 2002. We have been reading the Jeanette Winter version as it outlines the conflict betweent he bird watchers and the apartment dwellers very well. Ask you children what the problem in the story was, and how it was resolved!

Elephants can paint!

Elephants can paint? Well, sort of... elephants can be taught to put pain on paper but cannot, for example, paint you a house if you ask them to. We had some interesting conversationa about this today, and will for the rest of the week, I suspect.

Elephants can Paint video: http://wimp.com/elephantpaints/

Welcome!

Mo Willems has written so many wonderful stories it is difficult to choose which to read first! This year, I decided tostart with his newest title, That is NOT a Good Idea! in which the baby ducks are warning, we assume, mother duck about the impending advances of evil fox. The story has a delifghtful twist that is so fun to see realized in the eyes of children-- Your children have learned library expectations for circulation and behavior, and we are lucky to have TWO lessons together (for now) each week to reinforce these early rules.

Please call or email me wih questions about the program-- I love to celebrate our progressive library!

Summer Library

YES! The library will be open Thursdays from 12-2 
and then again from 
5-7pm every week!

We have air conditioning :)

Overdue Books

If children have brought back ALL their library books by their last visit to the library, they may take out 10 books for the summer. 

I am trying to wrap up the recataloging project I have have undertaken this year and an opportunity to label those books which have been sitting on bookshelves was more than I could resist.

If you are not receiving a weekly email from me indicating which books your child has out, please let me know (be sure to include your email address) and I would be happy to add you to my list.

Wrapping it up

We will read the I lost my Tooth in Africa, Stella Louella's Runaway Book, and  Chicken Chasing Queen of Lamar County to wrap up our last weeks in school. These are each shelved in different parts of the library which your children are learning to navigate with ease! The tooth book is shelved in with Traditions; the Runaway Book is shelved in with libraries and the Chicken book is in with Farms.

Fish

I have been using the website WIMP.com for supplement to the lesson I am introducing to the Kindergarten. The videos are short, accurate and have high appeal. In some cases, the video prompts the lesson: This Aquarium was so gorgeous that I have gathered fish books from all over the library to share.

If you have not had a chance to see our new organizational system here, do drop by!

Hats and Chickens

I love hat books and our collection has many! One of my favorite activities to do with kindies this time of year involves making an accordion book where children help illustrate for the chicken-main character.

"This is not the perfect hat" is repeated three times on successive pages with the chicken wearing unimpressive hats then ends with "This is the perfect hat!". In the final picture, children have een very creative in their rendition of fabulous-- everything from full flower gardens to submarines. Ask your child to share!

ABC Books

In the re-catagorizing I am doing in the library it became apparent how many ABC book we have! They are now all shelved together, so I thought it would be useful to share a few with your children.

This is one of my favorites: Pilobolus. The alphabet letters are represented by athletes posing into forms which begin with each letter-- j is represented by a jackin the box, for example.

This lesson will help lead me into introducing the METIS categorization  system to them later this year.

FireBoat

A few students were interested in boats this week and I thought I would read a bit of non-fiction with them. The book Fire Boat by Maria Kalman is about the renovation of an old fireboat just before 9-11. The boat is critical in that the water lines under the city were destroyed when the towers fell. Fire Fighters depended on getting water from the harbor to put out the fires.

I also found some great clips online of the boat, now being used for tourism, spraying its hoses all in different directions.

Perspective

One of the information literacy skills I am responsible to teach concerns the perspective of picture books within the narration.

There is a wonderful story by Patricia Polacco called Emma Kate in which the surprise ending flips your understanding of the story. The character is an elephant, so I am pairing it with Elephants can Paint and this video: http://wimp.com/elephantpaints/

Red Clover Award

Every year, 10 picture books are chosen as nominees for the Red Clover Award. Students in grades 1-4 hear all 10 titles and vote for their favorite. I am beginning to read many of these titles to your children and will show them their links on the library page (under the Students tab on the TBPS site). We are currently reading about Jane Goodall in Me...Jane.

Red Clover

The Princess and the Pig by Jonathan Emmett is one of the Red Clover books this year. Vermont students vote for their favorite of 10 titles, selected by educators and book lovers (I am on the committee this year!). They represent a range of topics and genres. This is a fractured fairy tale with elements from many familiar stories. The author has embedded these elements in asides, but leave the story to stand alone.

Just a warning: the infant princess produces a wet squelching noise from her diaper early in the story which is not directly identified, but which we mimic. Apologies in advance.

"Koala Lou, I do love you" is the repeating line and message given to the koala in this story who is interested in entering the Olympics. She seeks her busy mama's approval and wants to win. Spoiler alert... she does not win and no surprise, STILL has her mother's love and affection unconditionally. I pair this book with another story called Finding Home by Markle, which is also fiction, but much more realistic. We end the lesson with several "true" stories about koalas to support the discussion about what is true, factual, and what is made up. Bottom line-- koala's don't wear clothes. All this discussion is the beginning of your child's journey as a critical thinker. S/he will need to evaluate resources continually throughout their lives for credibility and authenticity. Determining whether a title is fiction or non-fiction was easy when the library was arranged accordingly. No longer. Read more about how (and why) I have decided to mix together our collection here.

Nabeel's New Pants

Nabeel's New Pants: An Eid Tale is a prequel to Joseph's Little Overcoat next week... a delightful tale of good intentions going awry with a questionable result. Here is the review from School Library Journal, the premier source for making decisions about which books will grace our collection:

Starred Review. Kindergarten-Grade 2—Nabeel's dilemma with his new pants is a familiar sort of predicament borne by simple, good-hearted folks in many strains of folklore. He's a shoemaker whose business has gone well on the eve of Eid, the holiday culminating Ramadan. Purchasing gifts for his family, he also buys new pants to replace his patched trousers. However, they are "four fingers too long." Though his wife, mother, and grown daughter are appreciative of the finery he has bought for them, all are too busy with holiday preparations to shorten the pants. Roy's cheerful folk views, the figures drawn in ink and painted in warm tones of gold, brown, green, and blue, pair beautifully with the economical, repetitive scheme, which soon becomes predictable. Nabeel shortens the pants himself, only to be followed by the three women, each of whom cuts off four inches and hems them again in gratitude for his goodness. The author and illustrator are both from India; the tale is ostensibly Turkish and is sprinkled with Arabic terms, listed in an opening glossary. A fine choice for read-aloud fun, the story is a simple introduction to Muslim culture that will evoke empathetic chuckles when the mishap is discovered as Nabeel dons his knee-length pants on the morning of Eid. The damage is soon repaired in a tale that will pair nicely with Simms Taback's Joseph Had a Little Overcoat (Viking, 1999) and countless other tales of shoemakers and tailors or domestic errors.—Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston 

Let it snow!

Pam Flowers is an author who visited us last year and wrote stories about her adventures as a musher. I read Douggie to the kindergartens this week-- complete with a Polar Bear encounter! We are talking more aobut books that are true (even when they have illustrations) and how you can tell the difference.

We also watched a video about Susan Butcher another musher from the north. I have been pleased with the Discovery Streaming site we subscribe to for video content to enhance my lesson. 

Zooflakes is a picture book (now shelved in with our ABC books) that has beautiful snowflakes cut into the shape of animals. It is a quiet companion to the intensity after Douggie!

Owen and Mzee

These are wonderful stories about a baby hippo who was caught in a Tsunami and separated from his mother. After being rescued, he (Owen) is placed in an rehabilitation facility with a galapagos turtle named Mzee, and they bond!

I will be introducing this as a "true story" in the context of our current non-fiction section. If you are following my Metis blog on the library page, you know I am shifting things around in the library a bit and the nonfiction section will disappear... The big plan is for children to begin to make decisions for themselves about what is real rather than have me determine it for them... the new system will allow for this!

Teresa Davis visited with all 85 Kindies this morning!

Teresa started with facts (background knowledge) kids knew...
Ask your children to show you ther Sphynx pose...
Geography Facts and vocabulary

• The mimiced the flow of the Nile.
• Red Sea, Nile River, Sun rises in the East where the people lived, sets where the pyramids were, in the West. There were 130 pyramids!
• There is only one sphynx in Giza...
• Pyramid shape is like a triangle.
• Sarcophagus is where the mummy goes, Sarcophagus goes in the pyramid.

Dressing

• crown
• jewelry
• cuff for wrist
• collar for neck
• cartouches are necklaces that spelled out their names. They wrote thier names alot so that they would not be forgotten when they died.
• short sleeves
• tunic, dresses were light fabrics and loose fitting
• people wore shorter things when they were doing work
• longer robes were worn for fancy

Clean!

• Egyptians likes to smell nice! They bathed all the time!
• Most shaved their hair to keep cool and clean
• They wore wigs

Nile

• Called Black Land because when the Nile floods, the silt is great for plants!
• They celebrate when the Nile floods because they can grow plants like papyrus.
• Papyrus was used to make paper-- both the plant and teh paper are called papyrus
• Children mimiced the process with their hands!
• Egyptians wrote hieroglyphs on their papyrus

Animals

• cows, horses, camels, crocodiles, goats
• Which are the same and which are different
• Milk, meat, bread - hard and crunchy
• Mummies taught us that the bread wore down most Egyptians teeth!
• Crocodiles grew up to 20 feet! Measure it out and be amazed
• Hippos walked on the bottom of the Nile
• big, heavy like elephants

• Some animals were sacred-- cats
• Mice would steal grain and spread disease. Egyptians thought cats were magical and even made mummies out of them!
• Beetles were thought magical becasue when babies hached from dung balls, Egyptians were amazed!

Gods

• Osirus was green to represent rebirth
• Ra had head of a falcon
• Anubus had the head of a wild dog or a jackal
• Thoth - ibis head - god of wisdom and knowledge and invented writing