ABC Stations

Students in first grade read several ABC books and then talked about the importance of ABC order in the library. After reading LMNO Peas by Keith Baker, students created their own book--More LMNO Peas:

To wrap up their work, students rotated through several ABC stations. In table groups, students arranged pictures of book characters in alphabetical order, stacked cups with words on them in alphabetical order, placed pictures of book spines in shelf order, and arranged words from a magnetic poetry kit into alphabetical order. Other centers included a coloring station, a Lego stack station, and another card station.

Look Who's Visiting the Library!

Well-loved book characters are making an appearance at the library this fall. Stop by to see them!

IA Children's Choice Award Book Find Activity

Students in 3rd - 5th grades participated in a book find/scavenger hunt activity as a way to learn more about this year's IA Children's Choice Award nominees. Using the clues in the handout below, they moved about the library to see if they could match descriptions with book titles.

Click here to access a copy of the book find activity.

Animals Should NOT Check Out Library Books!

After discussing book care and watching a presentation from the Elementary Library Routines wikispace about why animals should not check out library books, students in the third grade classes chose their own animals to write about and illustrated why they too should not check out library books.

Above, students in Mrs. Nims's class at Dallas Center Elementary 

show off their animal book care pages.

More Displays: Hungry for Books!

I like this display because it has a 3D effect with the balloons. It may also be the reason that I don't like this display. We'll see how it holds up. My favorite part was putting holes in the book covers to show that our Hungry Caterpillar loves books!

ICCA: Blending techy with creativity for our decor

We've decided to take a break from working on aligning our curriculum to the Common Core to do something fun: decorate! We spent a day last week making these large posters to hang in our libraries to promote the Iowa Children's Choice Award books. We want to give a huge thank you to Mrs. Nase at The Book Bug for inspiring our creation of these posters. Check out her media specialist blog for great ideas.

New Reading Corner at DC Elementary

The Dallas Center Elementary library has a new addition--a reading corner!

The new book slings will feature many of the new books to the library, and the milk crate seating will make for a comfortable spot for up to 4 students.  Thank you to the blog Penny Carnival for the book sling idea, and The Boutons' blog for the milk crate seating!  The reading corner will be one of the new library centers students will experience when they return later in August.