It seems these days, time is flying by and we are being consumed about learning about the Caldecott Medal.  We just finished reading Journey, by Aaron Becker, a 2014 Caldecott Honor Winner, in prek.  Some of the classes, made art about what lies behind their magical red door.

Mrs. Szymaszek's class completed a great little activity based on the book Snow, winner of the 1999 Caldecott Honor Medal.
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Classes in k-2nd grade listened to the Caldecott Winner, Snowflake Bentley and then made virtual snowflakes.

Every afternoon for a week,  a group of 4th graders have had the opportunity to code Ozobots.  This has been a great experience and has really stretched their thinking skills.

As the year ends, I would like to say thank you to all the amazing students at Discovery Academy.  My new home is a wonderful place to be and I can't wait to begin 2016 right here!!

It is that time of year, where we celebrate the illustrators of picture books.  In January, the children's book awards are announced.  To build excitement in students, we are learning about the Caldecott Award.  The award has been in existence 1938.  I spend the month of December sharing a few award winning books with the students.  This week we read the 2015 Winner, The Adventures of Beekle, illustrated by Dan Santant, 2015 Honor Winner Sam and Dave Dig a Hole, Illustrated by Jon Klassen, 2013 Winner This Is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen and finally finished the week with 2007 Winner, Flotsam illustrated by David Wiesner.  

The library ipad cart arrived this week which allowed us to become digital illustrators.  We modeled our drawings after This Is Not My Hat and Flotsam in Prek - 1st Grade

November is picture book month and the Eric Carle Museum is promoting picture books with the #GetBehindPictureBooks.  I thought it would be fun for our staff to get behind picture books and send me their photo behind a picture book.  

Students in Ms. Quimby's and Ms. Dunn's class are busy working on a balloon mural to connect with the biography of the man who created the first balloons for the Macy Day Parade.  We learned the first parade was held in 1924 and the first balloons flew in 1928.  Here is just a sneak preview of the murals.

Our third graders are hard at work researching recycling.  In Mrs. Clark's class we uncovered the best fact of the day: Mealworms can eat through styrofoam and make it biodegradable. The found all this great research using the databases from iCONN.org

Mrs. Dunn's class used a mentor text, Perfect Square by Michael Hall, to take a square, deconstruct it and make something of it.  It was fascinating to watch them process and create something from a perfect square.

What a week!!  Prek - 1st grade wrapped all their hard learning about spiders.  We had so much fun learning non fiction facts about spiders.  Though I think most of them will only remember Mrs. Gargula's favorite spider word "spiderlings".  A few classes learned how to draw simple spider webs to wrap up the week.

Second graders began learning about digital non fiction sources.  Over the next few weeks, we will be exploring new sources on the web.  Watch our list grow of resources on the Discoverylmc.com 2nd grade page.

Some students in 4th grade had the opportunity to experiment with Ozobots on Friday.  These are little robots that follow paths.  In the near future, I hope to have a group that will be able to code the ozobots with codes, using blocky.

There is always exciting things happening in the library media center!!

We've had a busy two weeks in the library. So busy in fact, I didn't have a moment to post last weeks update.

Last week our first graders and two kindergartners worked on a project of "Animals Should Not Check Out Library Books".  Check out their ebook we compiled here:
http://www.discoverylmc.com/1st.html 

Mrs. Quimby's class spent three class periods learning about spiders, taking notes, writing a fact or spider vocabulary words and creating spiderlings to hang in the library window.

Our library laptop cart arrived and that meant our second through fourth graders to use them to work on learning about how a library is organized.  We play the game Shelver to learn how books are placed on library shelves.  

Our prek students had fun playing alphabet bingo in the library this week.  A few students even had BINGO. 
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We are still learning about how libraries are organized.  We worked on alphabet skills this week.
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Some of us worked on logic skills puzzles after we completed our work or after book checkout.
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Next week will be exciting, our tables and benches are arriving. Stay tuned for pictures!!

Some of our prek students heard the story The Library Lion. Students colored in a library and some even made the lion's mane a pattern.  What fun we had coloring and talking about proper book care. 

Some of the prek students heard the story Five Little Monkeys Reading in Bed.  Students worked on finding similar monkeys in our matching game.

Our kindergarten students listened to the story A Library Visit for Bear.  We then worked on writing things we like to read, eat and other favorite things.

Finally, our second through fourth graders are learning about how a library is organized.  We started off with playing a simple alphabetical order game with fake fiction spine labels.

Last week we celebrated Dot Day.  A day to celebrate your creativity and make your mark on the world.  Some of our activities included creating 3D dots, Quarter dots, and playing games with dots.  

Last week and this week our students had fun reading animal poetry and creating shape animals, inspired by Lois Ehlert's Oodles of Animals.  We used foam shapes purchased from the craft store, markers, crayons and construction papers.  Students were required to assess their work using a shape rubric.  We had lots of creative minds, hard at work in library.

After reading this book, 2nd graders had to create free standing structures.