Saturday, March 07, 2009

Read Across America


This past Monday, we celebrated Read Across America in the library at our school.  I have trouble planning for these one-day celebrations. I know that literacy is built over a lifetime and that one day celebrations are not the real work of literacy teaching. But, I wanted to do something that would be fun for the students and that would familiarize them with many of the books in the library. So, I came up with about 20-25 ideas--books that invited "things to do".  Books that kids could have fun with. We set up the library with 20 tables filled with books and activities that kids could do around books.We have the best library aide in the world and we worked together to get it all ready in time. We had several moms come in and teach Origami and we pulled the Origami books for that table.  We made Pigeon Hats that were featured on Mo Willems' website.  
Other areas included: Paper Airplanes
Make a Bookmark
Be Filmed Talking About Your Favorite Book
Building Books with Building Toys
How to Draw Books
Song Books
Scrambled States of America Books and Games
Joke and Riddle Books
Lucky for me, I had great support for this event. Loren Scully, the children's librarian at our Dublin Branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library System spent much of the day with the kids at a Captain Underpants game--Kids had the chance to toss underwear into a toilet and to see how many of them could fit in the World's Largest Pair of Underwear.  Not only did she join us for the day but two of our local Starbucks baristas helped out too!  (Did I mention that, in my opinion,  we have the best library AND the best Starbucks in the country.) Our art teacher is also incredible and he ran a table where kids did painting like Eric Carle. It was quite a busy station and the kids had a ball painting. Our Enrichment teacher filmed students who wanted to talk about their favorite book. Our Technology Support Teacher worked with kids to create bookmarks on Comic Life. The day was a hit. Kids had fun and adults were exhausted! This week, a few kids started asking for some of the Origami books and paper airplane books. Everyone had fun around books and kids got their hands on lots of book that I hope they'll ask for again!

6 comments:

  1. It looks like you (the kids and the staff) had so much fun!

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  2. Franki,
    This looks so fun! I want to know more about how you organized this!
    Carol

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  3. First of all, love the smilebox slide show!
    Second, what a great idea! So many fun activities to do! And incorporating the baristas and the Dublin librarian -- genius!
    Thanks for sharing!

    (and by the way, the library looks great!)

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  4. Very nice Franki! I loved the smilebox slideshow. It gives us some insight about how you used your space. Love how you keep reading fun for everyone!!

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  5. Looks like fun was had by all!

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