Two more groups have made the Library Honor Roll for returning their library books. Miss Smith’s Brown Room friends and Mrs. Smith’s Red Room and Mrs. Sylvestre’s Orange Room friends filled their book return charts with 100 stickers. For their efforts, the students were awarded Valentine pencils and heart-shaped stickers. Keep up the good work, kindergartners!
Five senses
Mrs. McCall’s class is learning about the five senses. During last week’s library visit, the children listened to Bats at the Library by Brian Lies. Since mother and baby bats use their sense of smell to help identify each other, the children had to use their sense of smell to identify different scents (vanilla, maple, strawberry, almond, peppermint, and perfume). Then they had to match two paper bats that had the same smell. All those scents was enough to drive anyone in the library batty!
Chickadee update
This week all the students in grades K-2 listened to the Chickadee Award nominee Fly Free by Roseanne Thong. This gentle story is about a young girl whose good deed sets a wheel of kindness into motion in her village. For a story extension, the students explored the story’s setting, Vietnam. They viewed and discussed photographs of life in Vietnam in the country, along the coast, and in the big cities. Then they took an imaginary field trip to Vietnam with the help of Google Earth. The students zoomed in from North America to Maine and then Carl J. Lamb School in Springvale before “flying” half-way around the world to see satellite views of Vietnam and a few snapshots of the scenery.
Service learning
Mrs. Minchin’s students have been working on a service learning project all year. Their goal is to help the animals at the Animal Welfare Society in West Kennebunk find homes. In the fall, the children took a field trip to the shelter and decided to focus helping cats get adopted. First they learned about cats and how to care for them, visiting the library on occasion for some research help. Then the students practiced informational writing by recording facts about cats and how to care for them. Recently, the students created a video about cat care. Mrs. Minchin took photographs of the students caring for a stuffed cat. Mrs. Miliano uploaded the photos to create a video using Photostory3. She helped the students to record cat care tips to go with the photos. The completed video will become available through the Animal Welfare Society’s website. The children hope it will help people better understand a cat’s needs and encourage them to adopt a cat from the shelter You can be among the first to view it by clicking on this link: Cat Care_1.
Biography research
Mrs. Stevens’ fourth graders visited the library on Friday to learn about the online encyclopedia available through MARVEL, Maine’s Virtual Library (http://www.maine.gov/marvel). The students are reading biographies and using additional sources to learn more about their subjects. Mrs. Miliano demonstrated how to access the Encyclopedia Britannica through MARVEL. (It’s free, but you need to create a username and password to access MARVEL from home.) She walked the students through the process of selecting the elementary edition of the encyclopedia, typing the last name of a person first, and understanding the layout and features of the article. Each student searched for his/her research subject and printed the article for future reference.