Picture Book Month Smackdown Tuesday, Nov. 18th

Visit the Picture Book Month website

I am a Picture Book Month Ambassador. Which means I get to read lots and lots of wonderful picture books and read some aloud to kids and in general have free license to shoot my mouth off about how much I love picture books and how they are great lesson starters.

When my principal put me in charge of morning announcements this year she did not realize that I had been wishing for this very thing to come true. I seize my chance to start morning book talks along with the weather report and daily reminders. The great thing is...no one got upset about my little book commercials, in fact the reverse was true. Teachers and students begin to ask me "Do you know that book you talked about this morning about counting monkeys?" or "May I borrow that book about that biography, Black Elk that you talked about this morning?" I am so glad teachers and students are getting these micro book reviews each morning. What surprises me is that I never seem to run out of ideas for presenting books for the day. I love my library and try to squeeze in as much time for cataloging new books each week as I can possibly mange.

Join us Tuesday, November 18th 12:30 CST/1:30 EST for a collaborative Picture Book Month Smackdown. The following educators will be joining us along with their picture book loving students to share favorite book titles and brief summaries. Here is the PBSmackdown link or watch below.
Twitter hashtag is #pbsmkdwn

Participating schools include:
Andy Plemmons, school librarian in Athens, Georgia
Jenny Lussier, school librarian in Durham, Connecticut
Cathy Potter, school librarian in Falmouth, Maine
Kathy Kaldenberg, school librarian in Solon, Iowa
Shawna Ford, school librarian in Weatherford, Texas
Julee Murphy, school librarian in Corpus Christi, Texas
Christina Brennan, school librarian in Pennsylvania

Dot Day 2014 a celebration of creativity. It's Monday What Are You Reading? #IMWAYR

It's Monday! What are you Reading is a meme began by Sheila at Book Journeys as a way to share what you read and/or reviewed the previous week and what is in store for the upcoming week. It's also a great chance to see what others are reading. I first learned about it from Jen at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee and Ricki of Unleashing Readers and have become a regular linked up blog. Thanks #PLN

Dot Day Celebration

We started Dot Day a little early this year, in fact, we started two weeks before Dot Day. I read The Dot to all classes and collaborated with our new art teacher. One of my favorite parts about Dot Day this year was using The Dot Song.


Make Your Mark bookmarks: Download here

We also learned about the art of pointillism and obliteration art. A virtual trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art allowed us to take a "closer look" at the works of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. The link shown above is a DOTS DOTS DOTS sing along.


A book of looking at art
through the eyes of children and Dots!

Spot the dog and a dot headed Ms. Murphy greet families to Open House night and invite them to create family dots. Thanks to Barnes and Noble for lending us Spot the dog for the evening.







Spot was the highlight of the evening. Families were excited to snap a candid photo of their children having a great time. Spot was quite the celebrity under a lightning storm of camera flashes.

I found several items that would work well for creating dot shapes.

 4, 5 and 6th graders worked together in groups to create these welcome dots to 

greet families to Open House night.

Kinder kiddos made these window art dots. Here are a few samples.

 

I collaborated with our art teacher and she focused on her lessons on ancient civilizations and cave paintings. These are samples of foil etchings her students created. She also let 2nd graders crawl under their desks to get a feel for cave art.

Upper grades created original art that they cut into quarters and exchanged with other grade levels. Don't they look great?

We didn't forget our old friend Bot. Our Boy + Bot book by Ame Dyckman has stayed checked out every since school started but we still wanted to "Give Bot the Chicken Pox" dots again. It gave me a good time to talk to kids about a time when children used to catch chicken pox and how today's children will not have to experience chicken pox.



Well, you might have guessed by now but I haven't done a great deal of reading this week other than Dot Day reading and a lot of research on education topics.

I look forward to setting aside some time for Young Adult fiction for an upcoming Twitter chat and for our first annual Teen Book Fest by the Bay. Yesh, it's tough to stay on top of emergent reading through Young Adult reading. I read all levels since I work with kids from age 3 to university students. I find all level books fascinating.