Family Book Club Night

This week I hosted our first Club Blvd. Family Book Club Night. The families who attended read 1 of 2 chapter books (depending on the interests and ages of the their children) provided by the school.

 



The goal was for each family to read this book out loud together over the course of a month. I strongly believe in the importance of families reading together at home. Make reading a bedtime ritual and your children will grow to love books! Discussing books together as a family is a wonderful way to encourage and promote the importance of reading.

At the book club night, first we had dinner together and discussed some guiding questions at tables while we ate. In addition to pizza, families brought delicious snacks and dessert to share!

Next we split into groups according to the book we read. The Humphrey families moved to the Media Center and the Chicago families stayed in the cafeteria. Each group circulated around to activities connected to the book prepared by Mrs. Husketh.

In this center, students illustrated a character from the book and chose an adjective to describe the character.

Students created the perfect cage for Humphrey with all of his favorite things!

In this center, students mapped out Humphrey's escape route on graph paper. They labeled each place in their bedroom or classroom that Humphrey visited before returning to his cage.

Even though Humphrey is a fiction book, we learned a lot about hamsters while reading it. At this learning station, students completed a non-fiction graphic organizer to demonstrated what they learned about hamsters.

In the last learning station, students invented their own short story about Humphrey's next adventure.

Families who read A Long Way from Chicago created a giant map of all the places in the small, rural town.

They also created character sketches and storyboards of Grandma Dowdel, the spit-fire main character who was full of surprises!

  

All in all, this was an engaging evening filled with learning, discussion, and connecting through great literature! Our next book club offering will be announced after the New Year. We hope you can join us next time!

Book Buddies

We have a tradition at Club Blvd. where an upper grade class pairs up with a lower grade class to read together. We call this partnership "Book Buddies" and students really look forward to this weekly time together. This week, Ms. Fava and Ms. Reuther's book buddies met in the Media Center. It was wonderful to see our 5th grade role models reading to their kindergarten buddies!

Camp New Hope!

I had the pleasure of joining our 5th graders today on their fieldtrip to Camp New Hope. Despite the rainy, cold weather, the students were in good spirits and happy to be learning in the woods!

The students have been learning about the 13 colonies in their classrooms and my rotation combined outdoor exploration with the importance of fences in colonial times. The Colonial Williamsburg website tells us: "The construction of fences was among the most essential activities of the newly arrived Virginia colonist... fences were built for mainly practical reasons. In Virginia, livestock of all kinds was accommodated in the woods surrounding cultivated fields. As the animals could be branded or otherwise marked for owner identification and cleared land was often limited, crops came to be enclosed and livestock was thus fenced out. By no means restricted to agricultural use, fences also defined and protected all types of rural and urban spaces, such as churchyards, gardens, and workyards."

I showed the students 5 different types of fences found during colonial times: snake, split rail, chinese chippendale, plank, and paled. We discussed the reasons colonists might need fences of various types and what owning a fence said about a person's social status within the colony.

Then students broke up into 5 groups with each group attempting to build a model fence. We explored the trails near the front of camp and groups collected natural material to build the fences. I was impressed with what the students were able to create in such a short time!

Kindergarten Forest Animal Research

Recently Mr. Childress' kindergarteners visited the Media Center to learn about forest animals in conjuction with their camping unit. Although the students come weekly for storytime and check out, this was their first time to do research in small groups. We talked about what the word "research" means and why the Media Center is a great place to go if you want to learn more information about a topic. After looking around the Media Center, the students decided that books, magazines, and the computers were all things we could use to find information.

For this project, the students used PebbleGo, a wonderful website with four non-fiction databases. Our school subscribes to this site and students may also access it from home (parents--please email Mrs. Husketh or Mr. Childress for the username and password). We used the pictures in the animal database to help us find the article about each group's animal. Each student had a book to write down information and draw pictures about their animal's body, habitat, and diet. After learning about their animal in the Media Center, the students shared what they learned with their classmates.

Check out some of our learning in action!

Hispanic Heritage Month

In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, Mrs. Lehotsky (our media intern) created a beautiful display of books related to the culture in the Media Center.

To encourage students to read these fiction and non-fiction books, we created a drawing. For each book read, the student completed a learning sheet and turned it in to Mrs. Husketh. Around 40 students participated in this contest and Mrs. Husketh drew 6 names from the jar today as winners.



These 6 lucky students selected a book related to Hispanic culture to read and keep.  Congratulations!