Who's Your Daddy? Taking a Look at Greek Gods and Goddesses

Third grade students have begun a unit on Greek gods and goddesses. Using great materials from Nicole Shelby's Teachers Pay Teachers store, we have just begun our work, starting with a schema activity and watching Gods and Goddesses, an introductory video from Learn360.

While watching the video, students are taking notes about the gods and goddesses as Zeus introduces them one by one. 

Click HERE if you'd like a copy of the full notes page.

As the unit progresses, students will be learning about King Midas, Medusa, Pandora, and others. Character traits, allusions, and themes will all be part of their work and conversations!

11 Great Books to Consider

The people at Parents Connect have created a Top 11 list of Great Reads for Preteens. Curious about who made the list? Check out some of the books below!

Want to know more? Visit their website and see how many you've read and enjoyed!

Babymouse & Squish Have a New Home Online!

Babymouse and Squish, two of the most popular graphic novel characters in our libraries, have a new online home! Click HERE to see more about the characters and the books. You can watch videos, do different activities, and play games from the site. Also, you can find the links to the Babymouse official website and the Squish official website. Look around--you'll find plenty to do and like!

4th Quarter Centers. . . Coming Up!

One of the new things in the libraries this year is the addition of library centers. During check-out time, students have the opportunity to work at a number of different centers, which rotate from quarter to quarter. Some centers remain consistent, like the Puppet Center at South Prairie, and Reading Corner at DC Elementary, and the computer stations at all buildings.

Reading Corner at DC Elementary

Computer station

So, what can students expect to see in the 4th quarter? One addition will be a combined Would You Rather.../Mad Libs center--thanks to MakeItBlog.com and Brittany Eastman on Pinterest for the items we're using. Check out our Elephant & Piggie example and our Would You Rather...? example:

Example of a mad lib item for the new center

Example of a Would You Rather... item for the new center

Constellation Myths: 3rd Grade Research

Third grade students have been researching and learning about stars and constellations. Our favorite part has been learning about constellation myths.

First we learned about the stars and constellations from this book at TrueFlix. Students practiced note taking skills.

Next we viewed a video that gave a great overview of several Greek myths. Before watching, we did a prediction activity guessing what the stories behind constellations were; each group had a different constellation to make a prediction about. We were fascinated by the mythology and stories behind the stars. Many students knew characters from these constellation myths just by reading the Percy Jackson books!

Finally, we dug in and did some more research about  myths behind the stars. Tables worked together to take notes on different star constellations. Then, they used these noted stars to make a NEW constellation! See some examples below:

New Constellation: Brain Freeze, an ice cream cone

New Constellation: a shield

New Constellation: a heart

So Much Going On!

On Dr. Seuss's birthday we had all sorts of activities going on in the library! Students could create a birthday wish for Dr. Seuss like the ones below from RedKid.net:

Or, students might have been working at the computers on their You Wouldn't Want to Be. . . board games (from uncw.edu/EdGames) for an upcoming activity:

If students were waiting to work on the computers, they might have been checking out books or in their centers: