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...

Bulletin Boards

As we get closer and closer to school starting, I'm finishing up little details but having to really think about some big ones.  Like the bulletin board.  Duh duh duhhh!  What I'd love to do would be something like this fun mash up of all my favorite storybook cats:

You'll notice it includes The Cat in the Hat, Bad Kitty, Library Lion, the Cheshire Cat, Splat the Cat, Pete the Cat, Yoko (Rosemary Wells), Tiger (Read to Tiger by S.J. Fore), Huckle and My Cat, the Silliest Cat in the World.

But, how to get this onto a bulletin board?  I don't really know.  I guess the basic plan would be to use the overhead projector, trace it all out and then go back in with crayons or markers.  Yeah.  That might work next summer when I'll have a lot more time, but this summer I just don't see it happening.  I still have cataloging, weeding and shifting to do plus creating my class schedule and my lesson plans.  If I'm being realistic, I'm going to have to put this one on the shelf for now.

Our school has a theme each year and the teachers decorate their area (either above their doors or above their class lockers) with that theme.  This year our theme is Adventure.  The reading teacher already has "Reading is an adventure!" above her doorway...so what to do?  I have a Pinterest board for bulletin board ideas, and I think I like the giant 3D book idea.

• Reading Makes Life an Adventure!
• Adventures in Reading
• My Adventure Book (from Up! from Disney Pixar)
• Choose Your Own Adventure! - with giant 3D book?

I think I like the Choose Your Own Adventure! phrase with the giant book.  I could put the different genres in the pages of the books or just print pictures of different types of adventure coloring pages - have my girls color them - and then put them in the book.  That design needs a large box and one of my best friend's husbands is a plumber.  I am sure he'll be able to get me a water heater box!  A little brainstorming always makes me feel better about big, scary projects!

Not a Gnome...a Fairy!

I just got back from a short trip back to my parents' home in Nebraska.  I am so excited about all the treasures I found there!  First off, Mom let me go through her yarn and I found more than enough colors to go ahead and make my solar system!  A trip to Hobby Lobby had the balloons I'll need.  I think to make the sun I will still try to find an inflatable exercise ball I can borrow from a friend, since it should be a lot bigger than the planets.  If I could find a second exercise ball in a smaller size that would be nice for Jupiter.  I am going to start working on them tomorrow evening.

Mom had also finished the small blue and white quilt I asked for to cover my story chair.  It has more white on it than I anticipated but that's okay, it's still gorgeous.  I'll take a picture of it over the chair when I get to the school later this week.

And last but not least, Mom provided me with a perfect answer to the gnome problem.  I had pretty much decided to take the gnome out of my yard and use him at the school, even though he isn't reading a book - which is what the one I loved from Amazon had.  But anyway, right after I got to her house, Mom took me on a tour of her yard (she has a slight problem with collecting yard decorations...)  She showed me a very pretty little girl reading a book!

As you can see, she's made of resin and has some wear, but I like how her paint is faded in places.  There are a few things to fix, the hole in her sleeve and the crack on the book, and you can see she at one time had wings attached to her back.  I will make new wings for her before she goes to school with me.  Something like this:

I do think I'll need to use a better wire though.  This is wire I got to make jewelry with and while it is easy to shape, it will also be harder to keep in shape.  I think maybe "sculpting" new wings for her out of wire hangers might work better.

I have even come up with a name for her.  Ceridwen the Book Fairy.  She is actually named after one of my favorite characters from Kim Harrison's Hollows series.

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.

eBooks and Audio Books

I am furiously working away through my Plan to Read list.  I've read some really amazing books in the last few months, but I seem to keep adding titles, both new and classic.  I kind of feel that I'll never catch up with Junior titles the way I want to and be able to keep up with the Adult Fiction and Young Adult fiction I read.  I hate having to drive on long trips because it's time I could be reading - yes, I'm one of those lucky people who can read in the car.  That being said, the girls and I have a 7 or 8 hour drive to Grandma & Grandpa's house coming up next week.  My husband isn't going, and so that leaves all the driving to me.  It occurred to me that I should take some audio books with me that I can enjoy with the girls.  I picked a few titles from my Plan to Read list and a few that I hadn't thought of yet (those got added to my Shelfari shelf.)  I know we won't get through all of those titles on our trip, but at least 1 or 2 would be great to mark off my list.

Then I realized that I've been wondering how to upload and play more of my music on the computer at the school library while I'm working in the summer.  Duh.  I should be listening to books!  I don't have to listen extremely closely, I just need to catch the gist of the story.  And if it really intrigues me, I can go back and read the book itself.  I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner.

As for eBooks, I am still waiting to hear from the school district tech team if I will be able to install Adobe Digital Editions on my school computers.  I'd like to use the public library's Overdrive to check out picture books to read to the kids during story time on my projector screen.   I do appreciate the quick access that Overdrive allows me.  Today I was in training for classroom management, and I finished Paint the Wind by Pam Munoz Ryan - 5 star book, by the way - on a break and wanted something on my lunch hour.  I jumped onto Overdrive using my Kindle Fire and grabbed Angus and Sadie by Cynthia Voigt.  I don't think either the public or school library owns it as a print book so this is the only way I'll get it read. (I didn't realize it until I started the book, but Angus and Sadie are the dogs who appear in Voigt's later book Young Fredle.  I love story connections!)

Reading kids' fiction

I have been working very hard to catch myself up on a lot of kids' books.  I've read middle grade fiction off and on for years, sometimes out loud to my girls and sometimes just for my own enjoyment.  I started reading adult fiction when I was about 11 and so I missed out on a lot of those great childhood classics.  I since starting the Daydreamer's Book Club at the public library, I have read at least 1 junior title a month, and when I took the job at the school, I started alternating 1 adult fiction to 1 junior fiction.  As school draws ever closer, I've decided I probably need to read just junior titles for awhile. 

As you can see from my Shelfari widget, I have a lot of classics picked out to read as well as some contemporary works.  It's funny, with adult books I stick to 1 or 2 genres, with kids books, I'll read about anything.  But I have officially come across the first book I couldn't stand -- so badly that I quit before even reaching page 50.  That's pretty shocking for me with a kids book.  I tried to read the first of the Dork Diaries by Rachel Renee Russell, but I couldn't do it.  The language bothered me and the references to pop culture bugged me too (I'm a pop culture fan but I don't think kids as young as 3rd grade need to know celebrity girls go partying without their underwear!)

But these books are popular and the school has the whole series.  I'm not going to stop purchasing them, but I'll treat them with kid gloves.  I have never had a qualm telling kids that I didn't enjoy the Series of Unfortunate Events books by Lemony Snickett - I didn't like that Count Olaf told the kids outright that after he got their money he was going to kill them.  I don't believe you can hide children from the realities of the world, but I also think that some of the saddest facts about mankind can be learned later on.  Let them have their innocence for a while longer.  I'll just have to explain that about the Dork Diaries: the kids don't need to rush into being popular or not popular based on clothes, electronics or your parent's income.

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.