Where has the time gone?

I'm shocked to see my last post was back at the beginning of September, but truth be told, I have been a busy little librarian!

I've been buying books, lots and lots of books!  I started off with my wish list of books I'd compiled over the summer from reading reviews in Publisher's Weekly.  Then I started picking up stuff the kids had requested.  Note to other librarians: if you put a direction sign with "Gotham City" on it up in your library, the kids will hound your mercilessly until you get some Batman books.  I was able to get them in the 2.5-3.9 range as well as 4.0 and above (AR levels).

My latest project ('cause I don't have enough on my plate) has been to rework the dreaded green-dot section.  The first step was to sort the books and remove anything over a 2.5 AR level.  This section is where kindergartners and first graders get most of their books as well as second graders with low AR levels.  How terrible do I feel telling a child, "You can't take the one and only book I have about leopards because it's a level 7.2."  I also think there was so much in that section that the kids were mistreating the books without even realizing it.  The next step was to work in the Nonfiction section getting everything with AR available labeled - our school district has unlimited use of tests, so no worries about whether or not we own that test.  Now that we know what most of the books are AR-wise, we can start pulling lower level stuff to move over to the revamped "J Nonfiction" section.  I did get permission to order my new shelves and I'm so excited for when we get them installed!

I also decided that I needed to create a section for kids just starting to read, like high-reading kindergartners and first graders.  These books are not nonfiction so I created a new classification called "JrE".  JrE books are usually below 1.5 AR level or extremely simple (think Dick and Jane books).  They also have a green dot but will be located in their own shelf. 

On the lighter side, I had a lot of fun decorating for Halloween:

This is Charlotte.  The kids loved her and I was constantly telling them to leave her web alone.  I am thinking of making a more permanent display for her...so she can weave "Some Pig" into her web with no worries of little fingers touching it.

The animals got into the Halloween spirit!  Pooh is dressed as Tigger, Franklin is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, the Cat (from If You Give a Cat a Cupcake) is a red cardinal, the Pig (from If You Give a Pig a Pancake) is the Phantom of the Opera, the Mouse (from If You Give a Mouse a Cookie) is a cat and the Moose (from If You Give a Moose a Muffin) has on a sunburst mask.  I made them quickly using yarn, craft foam and permanent markers.

I went a little batty behind my desk.  For $5 I got a set of multi-sized vinyl wall cling bats from Target.  Then we cut bats from black construction paper, curled their wings and added them to the mix.

Now that Halloween is over I have to be a touch more serious...yeah, right!  The kids have been begging for the new Wimpy Kid book, Hard Luck.  I finally created a hold list and put this up since I only bought 5 copies to satisfy 500 kids!

And finally, I was bored with my Choose Your Own Adventure bulletin board so I decided to have some fun with a new one.  I totally lifted this idea from another librarian but I did mine a little different:

Here is the inspiration (above.)  I copied the phrase exactly when I did the board.

So, why is the phrase different now?  Well I work in a building with teachers, a.k.a. grammar police.  Apparently the word There's doesn't point to the word minion, it points to reasons, so the correct phrase is, There are a minion reasons to read.  I also made my board a little differently.  I went online and found coloring pages of minions I liked and an image of a stack of books.  Then I copied them onto transparency sheets.  Then we turned the entire school upside down looking for a transparency machine.  There was only 1 left in the entire school - thank you to our Art Teacher!  The design was done on a solid sheet of white in pencil and then retraced in black marker.  I originally thought I'd have time to color it in but never got it done.  I kind of like it this way.  Oh, and I'm extra proud of the titles of the books.  I searched my library catalog for titles with Apple and Banana in them, since what else would minions want to read about?

The kids love the board so much that I think I might have a minion themed Christmas tree this year.  I could have each child color a minion for my tree since they are all my "reading minions."

Progress, it's happening!

I am excited to see progress at the library!  I'm working with one of my awesome volunteers to go through all the books and anything that isn't marked AR (Accelerated Reader) is being checked.  If there is a test, I print the label and get the book updated in the catalog.  If it isn't, we mark it NOT AR inside the front cover.  We are working through the picture books right now and are halfway through the collection.  We do still have to do Fiction, Junior Fiction, Special Collections and Nonfiction as well.

Another great idea that I've been shown by the middle school librarian in town is to add the volume number to the spine labels of books in a series.  Her labels look like this:

FIC
Riordan
vol. 1

I would switch the author name to RIO but I very much like the idea of putting the volume number on the label instead of relying on the book to have it on the spine already, and I'd love to relabel the books that have the number written on them in marker - it just looks terrible.

So those are two big projects to work through and I need to do some kind of inventory where I can see each book, and how it is cataloged.  If I go through and scan each book, I can make necessary updates and relabel the ones that need it.  I have a Macbook on a rolling cart to do this with, I don't even have to pull whole sections at a time!

I'm also excited because I have asked my principal if I can replace the shelves where my "green dot" books are.  It is a large section of homemade shelving that has seen better days.  The shelves are all about hip height even though the bulletin board is only behind 4 of the 7 sections.  The shelves are also a bunch of different heights and the books just don't fit right.  She is all for it and after I did a bunch of looking, I thought I could replace the section for about $2000.  She suggested we spend more money and get 3 taller shelves and 4 short shelves.  They are all going to be the same style and will match my existing shelves better than what I have now.  I can't wait!

But on the sad side, I did have to ditch the solar system idea, at least for now.  I discovered that it was a lot harder to make them with the yarn than I thought it would be.  So until I find a better solution, no solar system.  At least not a 3D one - I found a very nice solar system poster on clearance at Target for $1.78!!  I took it to school and laminated it.  I also made a cute little information plaque to go with it.  Remember when there were 9 planets?  We learned a fun mnemonic: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas (or something like that).  I put it onto the poster with little pictures of each of the planets, then under that I put, "But wait, since Pluto is now classified as a dwarf planet, how about if we say: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Noodles."  I also put one last line about finding the planets in the 520s of nonfiction. 

I kind of went on a poster rampage this week.  We had an early out on Wednesday for teacher inservice.  The paras (me included) were given the choice to do busy work after school got out or take the afternoon off.  Since my husband took the day off, I was able to stay and work.  I spent the afternoon emptying out the storage cupboards and drawers.  I mostly sorted through bulletin board type materials, but I also found a lot of really nice library posters.    I got rid of about half of the decorations.  I just don't think I'll make use of tablecloths and place mats that are holiday themed.  I wouldn't decorate my home that way so I won't decorate my library that way.  I also got rid of outdated materials like a presidential portrait set that only goes as high as George Bush (the first one.)  I'll never be able to find matching Clinton through Obama so I figured why keep it?  I then took down all of the nonfiction informational posters on the shelves.  There is a fairly new set of Rubber Ducky nonfiction posters I moved from the ends of my shelves up onto the wall above Nonfiction.  Then rather than bombard the kids with yet another set of nonfiction posters, I laminated and hung posters from inside the DK Eye Witness Books.  I found posters for Battle (which covers soldiers from all periods of history), the Titanic (need I say more, the kids eat that stuff up) and Treasure (really archeology.)  I also laminated a poster on mummies of all kinds but because there is a photograph on it of a natural ice mummy, I chose not to hang it.  I think it might freak out the little kids.  But the sixth grade classes do a unit on mummies later in the year and I've already offered to loan it to them. 

I have a few more posters to get laminated but I see no reason why they all have to be "READ" oriented.  Yes, the library is about reading but it is also a source of science, math, history, and everything else in between.  Why not inspire the kids to dive into those stacks and find a book or two about the types of things they see on my posters?

So many things!!

We are down to about 2 weeks before school starts!  It's exciting and scary at the same time.  I am off the regular schedule at the public library now so my kids and I have been spending all our time at the school getting the library into shape.

I have been able to complete some projects thanks to finding a some great supplies on my vacation to see my family.  At Hobby Lobby I found the perfect solution to my Very Hungry Caterpillar problem.  I was inspired by this caterpillar from Let Me Think:

But I was having troubles finding any paper lanterns at a decent cost.  Instead I found tissue paper fans.  Each package had 3 sizes of fans.  This caterpillar cost me about $7.

I have also been working hard on the nonfiction section.  As it was when I started, it hadn't been dusted or shelf read in quite a while.  I spent weeks (since I couldn't be there full time) working on it and one of my main jobs was pulling off all of the labels on the shelves.  I understand that the labels are easier for the kids, but if they have labels they can skip actually learning the Dewey Decimal System.  Also, every time you shift books your labels have to be peeled off and remade.  I still need to go back in and use Goo Gone and a scraper to remove all the gunk from the shelves.

Since I removed the labels, I knew I had to find a way to  help the kids navigate the Nonfiction.  I loved this idea, but lacked the money to buy the set.

And while this is neat, it doesn't work for my shelves because they are so very full.

So my solution was to create these:

They are double sided.  The white section was made on the computer and has little visual clues along with my abbreviated Dewey guide for that level.  I then cut tag board into 8.5x14" pieces (legal size) and glued the white pieces on to each side.  Thanks to a new friend at the library, I learned to laminate them and after cutting them out, slipped them into the beginning of each section.  I may go back later and break the sections down further, but depending on how the cataloging is done, not all the books will end up clumped together -- like the 790s for example.  Yes, most of the baseball stuff is together, but you might have a few that fall earlier in the section or a different type of sport like golf that intermingles with it.  That's another reason I don't like the labels.  You can't put every like item together unless you catalog them that way or you end up with mis-shelved books.

I've also been working on my solar system.  I have learned something about myself from this project.  I apparently subscribe to the belief that if I'm going to do something, I'm going to go big or crash and burn.  As one of my favorite songs says,

If you're gonna go down, go strong go proud go on go hard or go home. 

I started with the giant beach ball, wanting to get my sun done first.   I am working my way through a 364 yard skein of acrylic yellow yarn.  I have used half of it along with 5 school-sized bottles of glue (watered down about 1 glue to 1.5 water).  I have a basic framework on the ball.  I read the instructions and I was like, "oh this won't be hard."  Yeah right.  I discovered right off that if you go in too many directions around the ball you run the risk of loops of yarn coming off, and then tangles when you go back and try to fix them.  So my first evening I rubbed vaseline all over the ball - like starting your cookies with a greased cookie sheet - and then working in a basically vertical direction.  I let that dry and today I figured out I could hold on to the ball with the spout at the top and spin the ball to load the yarn in loops around it.  This isn't going to work for the whole thing, but it does give me a horizontal layer.  I think with the basic framework of horizontal and vertical in place, I'll be able to start working in other directions.  After I finish this skein of yellow I want to use a skein of white on top of it.  I am still trying to figure out if it would be cheaper to just make my own glue, and I don't even want to consider the possibility that it falls apart when I deflate the ball and pull it out...

Giant solar system mobile

I have found from my shelf reading that the kids love the 520s - a.k.a. books on the solar system and space.  So I decided it would be fun to add a decorative display of the planets for my students.  But never fear, I'm not going to take anything away from their science teachers - mine won't be proportionally correct.  I found a very cool website called Planet Size Comparison where you can see how big the planets are in comparison to each other.  For example, Earth and Venus both rank right at size 1 but Jupiter is an 11 and Mercury is 2.5 times smaller than Earth.  Oh and the sun is 108 times larger than the Earth.  So you see what I mean when I say I have a proportion problem.

Anyway, when I was having my brainstorm, I remembered seeing this cute project all over the Internet:

This is the best idea for the planets I can think of.  I'll use different sized balloons to make the planets, along with yarn in colors that represent each planet.  This is basically just taking the yarn, dipping it in watered down glue, and wrapping it around and around the balloon.  Then a second coating of glue can be brushed on.  Once it's all dry, you pop the balloon, pull it out the area you left open, and viola!  If you really want to see how to do this project, visit this great tutorial by Raechel Myers.

My planets won't be light fixtures, they'll just hang from the cross beams of the skylight.  I plan to stagger them out from the Sun, not necessarily in a straight line, but in different orbits.

Teaching how to use the Internet responsibly & I Spy Dewey Decimal display

I have said it so many times, I'm not a teacher.  So, there are some things I know are important but don't really know how to teach.  I've been working my way through books on Library Skills & Manners, and I found one by Toni Buzzeo (she's a lot of great ones on this subject) called But I Read It On the Internet.  It had a great worksheet in it to help kids figure out if the site they are using is a reliable source of information.  I used that worksheet to create my own, and I plan to use it to help the 3rd grade and up classes learn to use the Internet responsibly.  You can download my version of the worksheet here.

I really loved all of the books by Toni Buzzeo.  In her book, The Great Dewey Hunt, she had the kids find small objects to represent the different classes of the Dewey Decimal system.  I have been trying to decide the best way to make the DD system seem easy to understand to the kids.  I was tossing around the idea of some kind of 3d collage for each DD class.  I thought of maybe mounting them on half sphere's of Styrofoam and mounting them on the wall, but then I worried about the little objects being pried off.  So my thinking switched to shadow boxes.  This would be great, but my budget doesn't allow me to go buy 10 shadow boxes.  But then it occurred to me out of the blue, I might have the perfect thing already in my possession!

These are card cases that my father-in-law built for my husband and his brother's collections.  My husband still uses his, but my brother-in-law didn't want his, so we took them.  They've been in my storage room for quite awhile.  They are very solidly built, have plexi-glass lids, lock and can be tilted up or lie flat.  Oh, and they are lined with dark blue felt, perfect for the blue and white Lincoln Leopards!  I wish they had 5 sections each, since there are 10 DD classes, but I think I can get around that.  Rather than have my husband remove the little ledges inside and put in 5 sections, I think I'll combine some of the classes that are going to be hard to display anyway.  For example, the 000s General Knowledge, the 100s Philosophy and the 200s Religion. Each DD class will have a simple breakdown of what's in that range, then the objects will signify everything you can find in the class.  Ideally, each section will look like it's own little I Spy scene.

Part of the work finding the object was to find a decent listing of the different classes and ranges of the Dewey Decimal System.  So I created an abbreviate Dewey Decimal Classifications list that I think is kid friendly.  Obviously there is more to each class, but I doubt kids would have much use for Freudian theory and frankly, I don't want to go too deeply into Religion in a school library.

I have always been a collector of - for lack of a better word - little things.  I kept a "thing box" all through elementary and junior high and in high school I created a 3D collage with my things.  I started treasure boxes for both of my girls and I keep odds and ends for scrapbooking and other projects.  We have so far gathered a lot of little plastic animals - cheap ones from the dollar store, not our nice Schleich toys, plastic bugs, plastic dinosaurs, seashells, coral, a wooden spoon, art supplies, a baseball bouncy-ball, a mini football player, sports cards, old 45 records, dice & dominoes, playing cards, a globe (it's really a pencil sharpener), an American Flag and a 1776 keychain.  I will need to keep my eyes open for other pieces that will fit into the cases; they are not deep so there is a limit on how big items can be.  I am not sure how I'll represent the 800s, but I will cross that bridge when I get to it.

Breaking out the books

Well, I didn't know how to title this post.  I have been putting up a lot of fun ideas and pictures of the decorations I've done for the library, but not what I've actually been working on book-wise.

I was able to sub 4 days before the end of the school year, as the previous librarian left 1 month before school let out.  During those days, I got a feel of some of what I needed to do to get ready for the coming school year.  The shelves are extremely full - to the point of books being incorrectly shelved because of lack of space.  One of the first big jobs that I did was to reorganize the Special Collections.  Not my favorite section, but it serves a purpose.  I recently shelf-read and weeded Fiction (anything with AR levels over 3.9).  I wasn't aggressive with my weeding, I just don't know yet what the teachers assign the kids to read and so forth.  Mostly I just go rid of severely out-dated books (like the novelization of Gremlins), and duplicates of low-circulating series like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.  My other solution to the space problem was to pull series of books with AR levels averaging above 5.0.  These books are going to be moved to a new collection called Intermediate Grades.

I spoke with the school's principal and she agreed wholeheartedly to buying a bookshelf for this new collection.  I ordered a double-sided shelf even though it will be flush with a wall, since eventually it will stand on it's own with the other Fiction shelves (after the new school is completed and the Intermediate books leave my library.)  In the same meeting she cautioned me about weeding too aggressively.  She agrees that books become outdated but teachers have absolute favorites and I would possibly burn bridges if I got rid of something deemed a "must have".

I have recently started re-working the Nonfiction.  The previous librarian had separated the 921s and moved them to the end of nonfiction.  I just can't abide that.  So while I was shifting them back, I started weeding.  I have a huge stack of books to go through.  I've decided to sort them into 3 categories:

• Discard
• Not sure (is this sports star still playing?  Is he/she some kind of legend?)
• Update - instead of 4 books about Princess Diana written in the early 90s, I could buy 1 new one on her that encompasses her whole life, and then purchase biographies of Prince Harry, Prince William and Kate Middleton.

I think I will need help with the Not Sure category, like from my husband who knows about sports.  I can handle political figures, musicians, actors, ect, but there is a limit to my sports knowledge.

I also worked my way through the Reference section and cut it down.  I plan to eliminate 2 sets of outdated encyclopedias - and possibly the third set as well if it is older than 5 years.  I read online that you should replace them after at least 5 years.  I am not discarding all of the books, some of them will be re-cataloged and put into Nonfiction.  I'd also like to look into replacing the atlases. 

I understood the basic principle of weeding but not exactly how to go about it.  I found the CREW system and read through it.  I found it amazingly helpful.  I will keep the guidelines from CREW in mind while I finish shelf-reading and shifting the Nonfiction. 

I have a lot more to go before school starts but I feel like I'm making the school library into my library.  A place where I can enjoy myself while I help the kids enjoy themselves.  I want them to be excited to come to my library.  I want them to take pride in learning library skills and library manners.  I want them to love books as much as I do!

Okay, one last thing.  Did you notice the bookshelf on the right side of my blog?  It's called Shelfari and I LOVE it!  I'm not using it for everything I read, simply because I read things I don't want on my school library blog.  I do have a reading life away from children's books.  But I love sharing what I'm reading and have read - I post all my books on Facebook when I start them.  Since starting the 1 adult book 1 kid book routine, I have read so many good books.  I hope you'll find the suggestions to your liking and maybe start a bookshelf of your own!