Wescott LMC

It’s Book Madness time at Wescott! We have not one, but TWO book tournaments going on right now!

Grades 3rd-5th Book Madness!!

Round 1 of Book Madness voting will close by the end of the school day Friday! Check the bulletin board outside the library or the Book Madness Website for the voting results on Monday morning. Help get your students excited about reading by encouraging them to participate!

Grades 1st-2nd Book Madness!!

We are doing a mini-version of Book Madness for grades 1-2 again this year. Lisa Wolf is partnering with me on this new adventure! It will be run through the Book Madness Website I built for grades 1-2.

This week students nominated books for the tournament. Mrs Wolf and I are setting the brackets and voting for Round 1 will take place next week. The brackets will be in the hall near the 1st & 2nd-grade classrooms. Please send the students to library with their iPads every week until spring break!

It is time for our next stop on our tour through a World of Genres! 3rd-5th grade students are encouraged to read a Fantasy, Fairy Tale, or Folk Tale this February in order to receive another stamp on their genre passports!

Our maker space project for the month of February will be “Make a Ball Maze!” Students will use box tops and paper tubes to make a “low tech” game. They won’t be able to keep their creations, but students from grades 3rd-5th can take a photo of their creation and post it to the library Seesaw account, and 1st-2nd graders can post to their classroom Seesaw.

Don’t forget that author Jean Reidy will be visiting Wescott 1st and 2nd graders on Tuesday 2/11 at 9:30 am! 

Reidy is the author of several books, including Truman, which has been on MANY best of 2019 lists!!! (Kirkus Starred Review, School Library Journal Starred Review, Junior Library Guild Selection, School Library Journal Best Books of 2019, Amazon Best Books of 2019, New York Times Best Children’s Books of 2019, NPR Best Books of 2019, Northern Lights Book Award Winner, Parent’s Choice Gold Award Winner.)

Click here for the book order form! Orders ar due by 2/3.

The BIGGEST DAY in children’s literature is Monday when the Youth Media Awards are announced! (Caldecott, Newbert, Sibert, Coretta Scott King, Pura Belpre, etc). I will be streaming the results whenever I don’t have a class – stop by and share the excitement with me!

“The 2020 Youth Media Award announcements will take place on Monday, Jan. 27, 2020, at 8 a.m. ET from the Pennsylvania Convention Center, in Philadelphia. Fans can follow the action live at http://ala.unikron.com , @AmericanLibraryAssociation or by following #ALAyma20″

Reminder: It might be 2020, but this month we are going to Journey Back in Time! This January 3rd-5th grade students are encouraged to read a historical fiction book for our next stop on our tour through a World of Genres!

I am excited to announce that author Jean Reidy will be visiting Wescott 1st and 2nd graders on Tuesday 2/11 at 9:30 am! 

Reidy is the author of several books, including Truman, which has been on MANY best of 2019 lists!!! (Kirkus Starred Review, School Library Journal Starred Review, Junior Library Guild Selection, School Library Journal Best Books of 2019, Amazon Best Books of 2019, New York Times Best Children’s Books of 2019, NPR Best Books of 2019, Northern Lights Book Award Winner, Parent’s Choice Gold Award Winner.)

I will send details on the visit and book orders soon.

New maker space for January: MAKE A SNOWMAN!

STARTING MONDAY, students can come to the maker space to make a snowman (or woman). We will be teaching the students how to do the project during library time, so you may want to wait to send them down to maker space until after they have had their lesson!

Please note:

• Students should come down during extension. If a student has an appointment during extension s/he can come down during another time.
• Only students with an official Maker Space pass can be in the maker space. One student per pass.
• In order to be fair to all classes, only 2 students should be sent down from each class at a time.The maker space table cannot accommodate extra kids, and we need to maintain a noise level at the table so that other activities can go on in the library uninterrupted. If you send more than 2 students down at once, we will send them back to class.
• Please let students know when they have to return to class. (There is a spot on the pass to indicate this!)
• Please remind students to clean up after themselves, and to keep a voice level of 1 at the table. (I will remind them too.)

Check out the “best books of the year” lists from the following sources (New Kid, pictured here, by Jerry Craft, has appeared on several of the lists):

• The 25 Best Children’s Books of 2019 from The New York Times
• NPR’s Book Concierge: Our Guide to 2019’s Great Reads
• Best Children’s Books of 2019 from the Washington Post
  
• Here are the finalists for the 24th Annual Audie Awards, presented by the Audio Publishers Association
  and representing the best in audiobooks and spoken word entertainment.
  
• Here are the Best Books of 2019 according to School Library Journal
  
• Evanston Public Library puts out a Best Books list each year! Check out their picks for2019’s 101 Great Books for Kids!

Back by popular demand, our new maker space for the month of December is … Building with straws! The kids were AWESOME engineers with the straws last year, and we can’t wait to see what they come up with this year!