Parent Child Book Clubs

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Playaways!

I am super excited about our new playaways. Our students are too!

Audio books that kids can listen to with no extra equipment needed are a great way for students to listen to books and improve their fluency.

Brimhall Bonanza K-2

 We had our K-2 Brimhall Bonanza last night. What a fun event. I always love to see kids engaging with their families around reading and math. I also enjoyed connecting with all of our families.

We had a Bonanza theme (western wear was optional). Our staff came together to create stations for each grade level around reading and math. At the end of the night, parents connected with one another and played a "Get to Know You Bingo," while their kiddos practiced a couple of songs.

My crew at the Bonanza (I have a 1st grader at BH)

In the library, I hosted a bonus book check out for students to teach their parents how the library works. A campfire read (fire shown on Smart board--Yeah for people that post YouTube videos of crackling campfires!), iPad EveryDay Math games, and BookFlix. I got to meet a ton of parents and make some connections. Classroom teachers said their rooms were bustling.

First Grade Friends

The first graders learned how to create images using KidPix with me. In the classroom, they interviewed a friend and wrote a report. We then created an eBook using FlipSnack EDU- a great free eBook creation tool.

Check out our completed projects:

1 Wessman
1 Crain
1 Diffley
1 Smith

Brimhall Bonanza

Families learning together

November hosted our school's grades three and four Family Learning Night. This year, the "BRIMHALL BONANZA" was complete with our own theme song which we played over the announcements leading up to the event. (Hear our song here.) We worked hard to advertise, and it worked! Over 100 families (300+ people) attended the event. I planned the Bonanza with my coworker Melanie Groth (our reading/math coach).

It was a western wear optional evening--so notice how we are all dressed up!

Ms. McCormick with Blaze.

Our goals for the night were: to have students show their parents some of the things we do at school, for parents and children to have a fun learning based night, and for families to connect with one another. It was also a great way for me the librarian to showcase our library/collection and meet families. I think our goals were met.

We created and asked teachers to help create stations around math and reading. At the event-- families were welcomed with a free deck of cards and dice to keep to use for math games at home. A delicious dinner of tacos (sponsored by the PTA) was served to all. After dinner--siblings were taken to free childcare. We then had choice stations for kids to attend with their families:

1. Database Scavenger Hunt in the computer lab
2. Everyday Math Games--3rd grade room/4th grade room
3. Math Games on the iPad
4. Bonus library book check-out
5. Reading around the campfire with your parent (I pulled a lot of great picture books--and had a campfire up on the SMART board).
6. Make your own trail mix (measuring practice) (reading directions)
7. Estimation Jars
8. Symmetry art project

After our station time-- our kids all went to practice singing our school song. The parents all played a getting to know you BINGO game. We gave away gift cards to Target as prizes (this motivated the adults to leave their usual parent groups and meet new people).

Our kiddos then performed a quick song, and we did a raffle for gift certificates for the spring book fair. It was a busy and FUN filled night.

Book Fair

Come visit our Scholastic Book Fair October 7-11. Students will be able to purchase Wednesday though Friday. The fair will be open the evenings of conferences. There are more book options available at the online fair.

THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING OUR SCHOOL LIBRARY!

http://bookfairs.scholastic.com/bookfairs/cptoolkit/homepage.do?method=homepage&url=brimhall

First Weeks

It has been a busy first couple of weeks of school. A lot of routines to be taught--to a lot of classes. This week, classes started checking out books. It has been fun to see how excited out students are to get books in their hands.

In fourth grade. Teachers asked me to collaborate with them to use our iPads to create a presentation for students to share with their classes.

We used Haiku Deck a free presentation app. It was great to get technology in the hands of kids right away this year.

We were able to learn about using the iPads, how to take photos, and how to insert them into a presentation. We also discussed what we had learned in third grade about using images that were appropriate for the message we were trying to send.

We had fun--It was a great intro to the other tools we are going to experience this year.