Legos in the Library: Final Slideshow

This is our last week for the after school program, Legos in the Library. Students'  creations were inspired by Legos, literature, and building with friends. At the beginning of each class, students had ten minutes to work from the same handful of bricks and build a different product. Next, we read a story and built creatures, vehicles or "thingamabobs" based on that theme.  First, we read The Adventures of Beekle by Dan Santat and students built their own imaginary creature. Next, we read Journey by Aaron Becker and they built their ideal vehicle for traveling. Finally, we read In a Dark Dark Room and Other Scary Stories by Alvin Schwartz and students built something scary. Each week I took pictures of their creations and compiled a slideshow (below) to showcase their work. Enjoy!

Book Fair Week in Review

Week in Review

This week was our Scholastic Book Fair which generates a ton of money for library books. Our PTO works tirelessly to make a spectacular event. Since the book fair is in the library, we have library time in the classroom. The great thing about this is that we get more time to explore literature which helps students build their literacy and writing skills and inspires many to choose these and similar books for their personal reading in the future. Read about our week below.

K: We finished up our Mo Willems unit by reading Knuffle Bunny Free. Students were given a new location that Knuffle Bunny traveled to and wrote about it.

Grade 1: We continued our exploration of stories with chicken characters. Last week we read Interrupting Chicken and described two of the characters. This week we read The Adventures of Louise the Chicken and wrote about something Louise did in the story.

Grade 2: We continued reading and discussing fables. We read Aesop’s The Monkey and the Camel and a “modern” fable, Dr. Seuss’s Gertude McFuzz. Students compared what was the same and different about the two fables.

Grade 3: We began our biography puppet project. We started by talking about how to find biographies in the library, and read and compared two environmentalist biographies, The Fantastic Undersea Life of Jacques Cousteau and Wangari’s Trees of Peace: A True Story from Africa.

Grade 4: We began our folktales from around the world shadow puppet project. We read a sample folktale, Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza, filled out a thinking map about the story, and came up with ideas on how we could transform it into script format.

Grade 5: We began reading stories about mermaids to inform and inspire students before they begin their mermaid art project. We read an adapted version of The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen. In the coming weeks, we will compare that with Robert San Souci’s Sukey and the Mermaid and Nicholas Pipe.

Unusual Animal Friendships

Students in Mrs. McKinnon's class are exploring unusual animal friendships. We started off with Tara and Bella, an elephant and dog who became friends at an animal sanctuary. Then we read Owen & Mzee and talked about possible reasons why they bonded. Finally, we read the following from Unlikely Friendships: 47 Remarkable Stories from the Animal Kingdom - Koko the gorilla and the cat, a seal and a photographer, and a snake and a hamster. This week students picked two animals they think could possibly make an unlikely friendship and will begin doing research to write their own animal friendship story.

See below for videos of our favorite friends.

Hamster and the Snake



Leopard Seal and Photographer



Koko and All Ball, the Cat

Legos in the Library

magical ship with reactor

Our PTO sponsors an after school program in the fall and spring. This year, I am hosting Legos in the Library. Each week we explore a different theme based on a story from the library. Students will use their imagination to build characters, settings, or whatever inspires them based on our weekly story theme. We’ll label and photograph the Lego creations each week. For a grand finale, the photos will be compiled into a Lego multimedia presentation to share with each other, friends, and family. Stay tuned for that. For now, here are a couple of pieces from week one inspired by the book The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santat.

Construcktor

The Head

Blue Cloud

Ice Pop, Bluey, & Fred

Mo Willems in Kindergarten

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Rocket Ship!

Students in kindergarten are listening to Mo Willems' stories from the Elephant & Piggie series, Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, and Knuffle Bunny books. Last week in library, students created their own version of a pigeon book cover by filling in the blanks, "Don't Let the Pigeon _________ the ________!" Below are some favorite pigeon gems.

Don't Let the Pigeon Sit on the Cat!

 

Don't Let the Pigeon Ride the Fire Truck!

In art, students read Knuffle Bunny and drew a picture of what their own Knuffle Bunny would look like. See below for the bunny cuteness.