2013-2014 Cool Tools for School Blog

I'm using this long neglected blog to document a wonderful program called Cool Tools for School. This class will allow us to explore all kinds of sites and see how we can use them with out library students. Join with me this year as I learn and interact with classmates.

Caldecott Medal

On January 14 at 10 a.m. the 2008 Caldecott Medal will be announced. Children at MHP wait eagerly to learn who will win the book award. They know that the award goes to the illustrator and that many art styles have won the award.
First grade children are reading Caldecott winning folk tales. We loved Rapunzel and Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears. Next we will hear The Funny Little Woman.
Second grade children are hearing Caldecott biographies. The Man Who Walked Between the Towers is an amazing story- and true!!! Philippe Petit shows a great deal of courage.
We also read Snowflake Bentley and looked at a short video clip on his life. Mr. Bentley spent his whole life photographing snowflakes and other things in nature. He was very dedicated and showed perseverence.
http://www.snowflakebentley.com has lots of good information. Bentley's Snow Crystals book is awesome. There are more than 2000 photographs of snowflakes in the book.

Rosemary Wells

Rosemary Wells is our author of the month for January. Her books go along very well with our school's character education focus. We looked at www.rosmarywells.com to get some biographical information about Rosemary Wells. We also looked at the Max and Ruby games on the Nick Jr. page- and played some in the library. Bowling and the toy train were our favorites.
Check out http://www.nickjr.com/shows/max_ruby/online_games/index.jhtml for some fun!
Kindergarten children have been enjoying the Yoko books. We read about teasing in Yoko and thought about ways we could have been nicer to Yoko than her class was. We have also read Mama, Don't Go and Doris' Dinosaur.

Jan Brett

Jan Brett was our author of the month for December. We had lots of fun reading her holiday stories. Because many of Jan Brett's Christmas stories are set in Scandinavia, we spent time learning about Scandinavia and Lapland. Reindeer are really used to pull sleds. People wear blue and red clothes like those worn by Teeka in Wild Christmas Reindeer and the boy from FinnMark in Who's That Knocking on Christmas Eve.
We also enjoyed reading Jan Brett's website. She has the very best author website we have found. Check out www.janbrett.com to see the amazing site for yourself. We colored some of the pictures from the site and relly enjoyed learning more about The Three Snow Bears in Jan Brett's video.

Library Conference

Ms. Nugent and I had the opportunity to spend last friday with David Loertscher. He's a former librarian and college professor. He teaches on ways to make the library program more useful and more in tune with current technology. We learned about blogging in the library, how to use wikis to share information, and other places where students can share documents. It was a useful day and I'm looking forward to incorporating some more technology into this library program.

Author of the Month- Jan Brett

We've been enjoying reading books by Jan Brett and looking at her website www.janbrett.com .
The website has all kinds of information about Jan and her books. We listened to Hedgie read a story, checked out several online activities and listened to Jan discuss how she wrote The Three Snow Bears.
Second grade students are now learning about Christmas customs in other lands. Today we read Who's That Knocking on Christmas Eve after we learned about Norwegian Christmas customs. Some traditions were evident in the pictures.
First grade children are learning about folktales. The Three Snow Bears and Town Mouse, Country Mouse are wonderful examples of the folk process. Jan Brett's drawings are so detailed that the stories really come alive. We are amazed at the way she can make rocks, needlework and wood look real!

Pilgrims and Wampanoags

Second grade students have been reading several of Kate Waters' books about Plimoth Plantation and the first Thanksgiving celebration. This week we will be comparing Pilgrim life to Wampanoag life in the 1600s. We are learning the terms for houses, tools, and foods. I will post examples of student writing after we are done.
Children have been very surprised to learn that Native Americans today dress and speak like the rest of us. They were especially surprised to discover that members of our school community are Native Americans. Feathers and beads are dress-up clothes, just like fancy gowns and suits. Nobody wears feathers to school!!

Newspaper club writing

Newspaper club students have been writing their articles. Here are some that we worked on yesterday. This is the first time we have tried this and we may do more editing before sharing our work with the school. We will be including pictures in our final version.

OPEN HOUSE
Open House was September 20. It was a night when you could go to school and check out the school. Families met teachers. There was a book fair in the cafeteria. There were cookies in the library. Open House was a nice evening.
-Rhys

THE MHP PLAYGROUND
Kids at MHP like to play on the school playground. Families helped build our playground two years ago. Our playground has monkey bars, a big fish, slides and swings. Kids love recess.
-Brandyn

PICTURE DAY
On October 24 and 25 we had picture day. We got our pictures taken. When I got my picture taken, I had to kneel down. When I got my pictures taken with my class I got to sit. When I got my picture taken I felt happy. I like my school pictures.
-Cara

THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL
I was a little nervous on the first day of school because I didn’t know Mrs. Pettit very well. I got to pick my own seat. My best friend sat next to me. After a few days I felt a little better. The first day of school was fun and I love school very much now. It is fun. Today is the 45th day of school. We did a lot of hard work today, but I got it all done on time.
-Kelsey

MRS. FEENEY
Mrs. Feeney has taught at MHP for twelve years. Her husband is a high school gym teacher. They have two girls. Brandi is seven and Krista is four. The family likes to play games like golf and softball. Mrs. Feeney is a great teacher and I learn a lot!
-Lauren

HALLOWEEN PARTY
Friday October 19 was the Halloween party at school! There were games, sand art and other cool things! Kids ran around in the P.E. room! At the end of the Halloween party Mrs. Misch gave everybody a goody bag. The Halloween party was fantastic.
-Erin

HARVEST CELEBRATION
On October 31 we had a Harvest Celebration. It was real fun. Each class read a story and made costumes. All of us walked around the gym two times. We sang songs. Moms and dads were there. Then we had a ½ day to get ready for Halloween.
-Andrew

CAFÉ BINGO
We play Café Bingo at MHP. It is fun. We play it every year. People say a letter and if you have the letter, you say “Bingo”. If you say “Bingo”, you can get a prize like a book or a little toy to play with at home. At Bingo there are drinks and food.
-Brody

Newspaper Club

Twelve second grade children at MHP have been learning to put their own newspaper together. We brainstormed ideas for stories, began to think of people to interview for those stories, and have been learning to use the digital comeras so that we can take pictures to go along with our stories.

Last week we went to the playground to take pictures for one story. Everyone got a chance to take some playground pictures. I'm putting some of the best on this page. The kids were really excited and took some great photos. Enjoy!!!

More Kindergarten Pumpkin Information.

Several more kindergarten classes completed writing about pumpkins. Here are some more of their efforts.

Mrs. Klock's class wrote:
Dig a hole.
Plant a seed in the hole.
Give it water.
It will grow leaves and roots.
Then it will grow flowers and little pumpkins.
The pumpkins will grow big and orange.
We will pick them.
We will make Jack-O-Lanterns.

Mrs Turverey's class said:
When pumpkins are big you can pick them.
Pumpkins grow in gardens.
First you plant the seeds.
Next you water the ground.
Then the seed grows.
It gets roots and leaves.
Then flowers and pumpkins grow.
The pumpkins get big and fat.
They will make Jack-O-Lanterns.

Pumpkin Pages from our Kindergarten Classes

Here is some of the information about pumpkins our Kindergarten children have written.

Mrs. Hansen's class says:
Pumpkins grow from seeds.
People plant seeds in the garden.
The seeds grow into little plants.
Then the plants get big.
They make flowers.
Pumpkins grow from the flowers.
When the pumpkins are big, we pick them.

Mrs. Giovo's class says:
First plant a pumpkin seed.
Give it water.
It will grow.
It will grow roots and leaves.
It will grow a vine.
Pumpkins row from the flowers.
When the pumpkins are big and orange we pick them.
We make Jack-O-Lanterns and pumpkin pie.

More Pumpkin Information

Kindergarten children have been working hard to learn about pumpkins this week. We made a chart of the pumpkin life cycle and learned pumpkin words: seed, plant, leaf, flower, pumpkin, and harvest. We made a chart to see how this life cycle works- from seed to pumpkin to seed again.

Now we are reading pumpkin themed books. Pumpkin Man, Magic Matt And the Jack-O-Lantern, The Vanishing Pumpkin, and other stories like these will be part of our library time.

Pumpkins and Harvest

Kindergarten children are beginning to learn about pumpkins. We are reading the book Pumpkin Circle and learning words related to pumpkins. We have put the words seed, shoot, roots, leaves, flower, and pumpkin on our chart. We learned that "harvest" means to pick something when it is ready to eat. Next week kindergarten children will harvest apples on their field trips. We will read several more books about pumpkins in the library and use Kidspiration to share our work.
On October 31 our whole school will celebrate harvest with a "harvest of good books". Each class is reading a book about animals in fall, scarecrows, pumpkins, or other fall-related things. They will make costumes in art, learn songs in music, and we will celebrate as a school. It will be lots of fun!

Learning about Fire Fighters and Fire Safety

October is Fire Safety month and so we have been learning about fire safety in the MHP library. Kindergarten children have helped to create a chart of fire safety rules and several children have demonstrated how to "stop, drop and roll". We learned where our rescue window is and how we will leave the library if there is a real emergency. We look forward to seeing the fire fighters next week.

First grade children have been using the Kidspiration computer software to create a web of fire information. We identified vehicles used in fire fighting, equipment fire fighters use, clothing worn at a fire, and safety rules. We will be ready to talk to the fire fighters next week.

More Pictures from Kalli Dakos' visit

I promised more pictures from our visit with Kalli Dakos. Kalli loves to "play poems"and she gets her whole audience involved. You'll see one teacher with "chicken pops" all over her face. Another teacher is sharing her love of music by singing a poem. In a third picture Kalli is using a streamer to show the rhyme in a poem.

The children didn't exactly know what a poem was before Kalli's visit and now they love to read poems.

Kalli Dakos Visit

We had a wonderful visit with author/poet Kalli Dakos on Friday. Kalli does all kinds of wonderful, interactive activities with her poetry and the children were totally captivated. I'm posting pictures of some teachers participating in Kalli's poetry. Mrs. Misch, our principal, got to kiss Hamlet the Pig NINE times!! Kalli included lots of bathroom humor in her presentation and had real little flushing toilets! I'll post more pictures in the next few days.

One item of interest. We had put up some of our poetry efforts on our Blog weeks ago and Kalli had them all printed out. What a great tool this blog is becoming!!!

First Garden Club Afternoon

We had our first meeting with the Fall Gardening Library Club yesterday afternoon. After a snack of cookies and a lesson on flower bulbs, the children took all of our supplies to the courtyard. We planted some daffodil bulbs, weeded a little bit and had a special treat. The courtyard apple tree was loaded with Golden Delicious apples. We ate them and they were delicious!!! Thank you, Mrs. Asmus for planting that tree years ago.
We will be continuing to work each week until the end of October. We have lots more bulbs to plant. Unfortunately, the apples will be gone.

More Kalli Dakos poems

Students in Mrs. Pettit's second grade wrote and illustrated couplets like the the one in Kalli Dakos' poem "Mrs. Cole on an onion roll". We began with the words "I was so hungry that I could eat...". Students then brainstormed things they liked to eat and a silly rhyme for that food. Here are some terrific examples. I'll get the pictures up soon. They are delightful!

Kara: We're so hungry
That we could eat
A can of corn
And a unicorn.

Danielle:We're so hungry
That we could eat
A can of canned peas
And some fleas.

Kelsey:We're so hungry
That we could eat
A bag of chips
And lizard lips.

Nick:We're so hungry
That we could eat
A pizza pie
And a butterfly.

Poems like Kalli Dakos' poems

Last Friday Mrs. Ballard's class wrote a poem from the point of view of a new library book. We had just read The Bug in the Teacher's Coffee and talked about point of view. We have lots of new books in the library. The children wrote:

New Book

My cover is stiff.
My pages are clean.
I'm the best new book
You've ever seen.

My pictures are bright.
My binding is strong.
If you read this book
You can't go wrong.

OPEN HOUSE and BOOK-LOOK

We had a terrific turnout for our school open house last night I was thrilled by the number of people who visited the library to check out our new books and get their cookies. Parents, grandparents, MHP students, older brothers and sisters and babies came in huge numbers to look and books and to chat. Thanks for the visit.
This morning teachers came to the MHP library for our annual new book "Book-Look". They were able to select new additions to the library collection for use in their classrooms. We have almost 300 new AR books and many other curriculum-related books. Now that staff have had a look, students may check out our new books.