News from the Library--September 25

Scarecrows in the Library!

As we head into autumn, several classes had fun reading about scarecrows this week.

Kindergarten--Mrs. Campbell's class had fun learning about how scarecrows are made and listening to The Little Scarecrow Boy by Margaret Wise Brown. They even practiced making the six scary faces! We also had fun with our resident scarecrow (see photo above!) and went on the internet to build our own virtual scarecrows at Build a Scarecrow.

First Grade--What happens when a scarecrow doesn't really want to be scary? First graders heard the story of The Lonely Scarecrow by Tim Preston and Maggie Kneen and were happy to see him turn from scarecrow to snowman and back to a scarecrow--only this time the animals were no longer afraid of him.

Second Grade--Poor Wodney Wat. He can't say his "r's" and life is hard until he saves the day for his classmates. This delightful book (Hooway for Wodney Wat) by Helen Lester is not only a favorite because of its humor but its gentle reminder that bullies often get their come- uppance in the end.

Third Grade--What happens when a librarian meets a motorcyle gang? Third graders had fun finding out while hearing Suzanne Williams' wonderful book, Library Lil. Lil convinces not only the whole town of Chesterfield that books are better than TV but she wins the heart of Bust 'em Up Bill and changes him to Bookworm Bill in the process. We also played our library location game and third graders are getting very good and finding the different sections of our library.

Fourth Grade--Judy and the Volcano by Wayne Harris was our story this week and after hearing how Judy Marx wrote herself out of trouble we made up our own fantastic group story by starting with the line, "One afternoon as the fourth graders were in the library, all of a sudden........." Each student got to add one story element and the narrative got more and more fantastic until we finished with (fortunately) a happy ending!

Fifth Grade--Musical Genres (like musical chairs) was our lesson this week. After a brief presentation about the different fiction genres, teams had fun spending two minutes at five locations in the library with a selection of books in the genres of historical fiction, science fiction, realistic fiction, mystery, and fantasy. When they finished making the rounds, each team reported on the characteristics of each genre.

Sixth Grade-- We played our ever popular Library Jeopardy only this time it was a newly revised version in which the questions were projected and teams could earn "money" by choosing their questions. That tricky final jeopardy question this week was in the category of Internet and Computers. The answer is.....HTML. Do you what the question is???


It was so nice to meet so many parents at our Back to School Night on Wednesday. If you couldn't make it, be sure to check out "Skills @ A Glance" on the Library Web Page. From there you can dowload pdf files of your child's grade level library lessons for the entire year. These are aligned with both the California School Library Association Information Literacy Standards and the California Academic Standards.

Until next week.....