Our District hosts Read Aloud Day each fall. Community Volunteers share their time in classrooms reading to kids. Thankfully we have a district coordinator who does all of the heavy lifting. My only responsibilities are to have a little Thank You gift and offer book selections for those who don't have a favorite with them.
This year my Thank You gift are the cutest little 2" square boxes filled with chocolate and a tag attached. These were done in less than five minutes start to finish!
Balloons Over Broadway has long been my absolute favorite Thanksgiving Book. Kids are fascinated by the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and this book lays out the progression of this tradition in an accessible way.
This year I had a little extra money in the Library budget and thought bringing in helium balloons for the kids to design would be fun. (* Last week the 4/5 graders designed their own floats on Tinkercad but ran into problems when 3D printing).
What I DID NOT expect was the amazing thinking the kids would use after designing their floats. Not all kids wanted their floats to work straight up so that led to much experimenting with strings and placement so the floats would "articulate" like Tony Sarg's creations.
I only did this with one third grade class - at 20.00 per class it would have been to expensive to spread through the school. That's too bad because kids were engaged, they applied the Design Thinking Process and their creativity - a lot of fun!
I am IN LOVE with this book, How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous. Some books I keep at my desk because I know I will use them throughout the year and this is ONE OF THOSE BOOKS. Filled with fascinating details and time- period snapshots, this book covers some heavy hitters in history. Multiple Kings, Scientists, Princesses, Queens, Authors and general people of interest.
My first subject we covered this week is Pocahontas. We started by discussing current Pocahontas background knowledge. This was enhanced by one (or sometimes two) Disney clips of Pocahontas declaring undying love for John Smith in key.
When we hit the sentence that mentioned Princess P was 11 years old when she met John Smith, every kid in that library was hooked. And outraged. And grossed out (me, too guys)!
This was just so much fun for the week before Thanksgiving and really gave us a chance to explore our perceptions vs what really happened. And talk about a run on non-fiction, Sacajawea even had some Biography check outs from this exposure.
