Dancing Dragon Puppets

First grade students spent several weeks exploring dragons in library. We read some nonfiction books about dragons including Behold, Dragons by Gail Gibbons and Lion Dancer: Ernie Wan's Chinese New Year by Kate Waters . We watched some dragon video clips on Chinese New Year dances and traditional Dragon Dances. Students made dragon puppets in art and then put on a puppet show reciting dragon facts that they had learned and doing a stick puppet dragon dance. We got the music for our show from students at the Las Vegas Kung Fu Academy. View a sample puppet show below. To see all dragon puppet shows, go to the  Student Projects page and click on Dragon Puppet Shows - Grade 1.

Frogs, Puppets, & Performance in Kindergarten

Kindergarten students spent several weeks exploring frogs in library. We read some nonfiction books about frogs including Nic Bishop's Frogs and Elizabeth Carney's National Geographic Kids Frogs! We watched some frog video clips on BrainPop Jr. , viewed a PBS video on metamorphosis, and saw a really cool Glass Frog video. We read classic fiction stories from Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad are Friends as well as Frog and Toad All Year. To tie it all together, we collected frog facts in a frog poster that students illustrated. As a final fun project, students created a frog puppet in art and performed a show reciting their frog facts and singing the song, "Five Little Speckled Frogs."

See below for a puppet show video.  View all puppet shows here.

Autobiographical Puppets in Mrs. Cabral's Class

Students in Mrs. Cabral's class listened to several biographies and autobiographies in library class. They learned biographical information on other famous people online. In art, students made a self portrait stick puppet and finally performed their own autobiographical/memoir piece with their puppet. See videos below.

Sarah

Michael

Trevor

Osbie

Talyah

Marissa

Steven

Austin

Quincy

Tyler S.

Tyler F.

Multimedia Book Reviews in Grade 1

Mrs. MacDonald's class read their favorite books and wrote book reviews for them in class. They drew illustrations for the review using Sharpies and colored pencils. In library they recorded the book reviews using Vocaroo. Put that all together...and voila...we have a multimedia book review. See an example book review below. To view all book reviews, go to the Student Projects page in the navigation above and click on 1st Grade Book Reviews - MacDonald.

Earth Week Bookmarks

We are celebrating Earth Week at Myron J. Francis. Look at the awesome bookmarks that a 3rd grader and his Mom made for the library. Made from cereal boxes and ribbon, they are creative, colorful, and serve as a sturdy placeholder for your favorite book. They are so popular that I decided to raffle one off in each classroom so that students at all grade levels can be inspired and one lucky person per class will have a chance to take it home. Thanks Jack!

Mystery Readers Read "Everything On It"

As part of reading week, mystery readers  will read a poem over the loudspeaker each day. Classrooms who correctly guess the mystery reader will be eligible to win Shel Silverstein's recently published book, Everything On It. Students in library who are on computers this week will be exploring the Shel Silverstein's website which has a fun section for kids only - like this matching game on the left. Happy Reading Week!