Election Day In an Elementary School

As we all know this election, I believe, has brought the worst out in people and I for one surely didn't want to see that happen at school.  I had heard about the book One Vote, Two Votes, I Vote, You Vote a Cat in the Hat book by Bonnie Worth and published by Penguin Random House.  If you go to http://www.seussville.com/catinhat4prez/ you could see the causes that they chose for the children to vote on.  Random House is giving $10,000.00 to the winning organization for the cause.  The website had each cause paired up with a Dr. Seuss book.

The Causes were:

Education you read The Cat in the Hat and the organization is Firstbook.org

Ocean Conservation you read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and the organization is oceana.org

Environment you read The Lorax and the organization is conservation.org

Fight Hunger you read Green Eggs and Ham and the organization is feedthechildren.org

Kindness you read Horton Hears a Who and the organization is pacer.org/bullying


I think it was just genius to write this book which does talk about electing a President but to then for them to link them to these causes which is something the kids could really talk about and care about.  Let's face it the children if given the chance will vote exactly how they hear that their parents are voting.  This way gave them a cause that they could relate to better and even care about.

The one bad thing is we won't know for sure who won until after December 1st.  The kids are dying.

We set up voting like a real polling place.  We had an alphabetical list of all the students and they had to come in with their voter registration cards filled out, sign their name and then enter to vote.  When they were done we had paper bracelets that said "I Voted" for them to tape on their wrist.  It was wonderful and I highly suggest doing this for elementary children.

We set up two computers in our Challenge lab for privacy

A 5th grade teacher helping to monitor

Waiting patiently just like in real life with their voter registration cards in hand.

2nd grade had just been talking about it in their class.

Finding names in our Voters book

Back in class with their bracelets and smiles

The kids were getting tired of waiting but that is real life.

Now if anybody were to ask me what I would do different, well I would have some parent volunteers not just myself and my aide, I would have more polling computers and I would put it in another room so that the library could still function.

Story Book Pumpkins

This is one of my favorite things to do every year.  It has gotten bigger and bigger every year, which makes me so happy.  This year we had more than 115 pumpkins and 10 teacher pumpkins.  The students and families were allowed to vote for their favorite teacher pumpkin.  I'll post the winner of that next week.  I surprised the kids and if they did a pumpkin they got a coupon for 20 minutes of free Library Center/Cozy Corner time.   I couldn't just pick a few to show in the blog so here they are all.

We also incorporate Red Ribbon week and Halloween with the pumpkins.  The last day of Red Ribbon week is "We have too much Character to do Drugs!"  The students can dress as a Story Book Character.  They must get the costume approved by their teacher and they give a little oral report in their classes that day about their character.  Many students did their pumpkin and their costume to match.

BreakoutEDU

If you don't know what BreakoutEDU is then you and your kids are missing out.  I encourage you to go to their website and check them out.  It is based on the concept of an Escape room where you solve clues to escape.  Breakout is a box with a series of locks and to find the  answers they must solve puzzles that have been created to align with their curriculum.  You might be asking, "What is the benefit of doing this?"  See the graphic below from the BreakoutEDU website.

 It is so much fun but really makes the kids think.

I did my first BreakoutEDU last year with 1st and 2nd grade and they did a great job and figured out the clues.  Inside the box you can leave a treat or a prize or some kind.  I have been putting in a coupon for free Cozy Corner time in the library and teachers have offered homework passes and class rewards.

On their website you register to learn more and they will send you a password that will get you into all of their games.  The games are written by teachers and are all done in Google Drive you so you can save them easily.  They cost $0.00, and we thank them for that.  If you buy the kit from them you will get it a few weeks or you can buy locks yourself and try to find a box.  I did buy myself at first but then I wrote and was awarded a grant by my education foundation and was able to purchase 15 kits from BreakoutEDU.

I started looking at lessons on the site and I joined the online community on Facebook.  There are so many lessons and helpful people out there and it is catching on like crazy.

I have written a few of my own too.  I wrote one for my staff to do for inservice and it was a 100% failure.  It was so hard and what I thought was easy to follow wasn't.  As my friend said, "Yeah it was easy if we were in your head!"  I guess they weren't in my head.

I did a breakout with 5th grade this week and the one clue that hung all the kids up was a word that rhymed with chill.  The answer was drill but to my horror they didn't get it.  I don't know if it is a word they don't use or if they were just tired.  Like any good teacher I think if 85% missed it then I need to re-teach rhyming words.  Or maybe they don't do woodwork with their daddy like I did:-)

5th Grade almost ran out of time

5th Grade - they did it

Plenty of time to spare

2nd Grade - they worked hard 

2nd grade - they did it and still had 5 minutes

I also have to say that James and Patti at BreakoutEDU were a pleasure to work with and so nice. They watch the Facebook page and answer any questions you may have.

I hope everybody checks this out.

Kathy

Challenge Tubs and Skill Tubs

In my last post I talked about the kids coming to the library during their center time from their classrooms.  We worked with their teachers to kinda set some rules about what they should be doing. We want them to always have the option of checking out a book.  However sometimes they don't need a new one yet and we want them to have the freedom of using the centers in the library.  We call them Cozy Corners but this year we added many things.  We wanted some specific skills that the students can work on that go along with what they are doing in class.  To start this I attend all the grade level planning meetings to find out how we can help and what we can do to extend their skills in the library.  That is how our Skills Tubs were born.

We started with the basic retelling of a story with First Grade and rhyming words with Kindergarten.   We have many props and felt board pieces that can be used for retelling a story.  My aide, Becca is also a genius at making things from nothing.  If I come up with a big idea she can make it happen.
For instance imagine making patterns in math.  She came up with making a tree out of pipe cleaners and using colored beads for the kids to make patterns on the branches.  We also include "Challenge Yourself" cards in as many of the boxes as we can.

Skill Tubs have "Challenge Yourself" cards in them

                                     

We put the items in a clear plastic size shoe box, which is what we use for all of our tubs in the library.  We found a perfect spot on the bottom of the Easy section.  That little wasted space is no longer wasted.  We marked the boxes with the grade and Skill tub and bam you have a perfect skill tub.  When we are ready to rotate them out we just take the skill tub tag off and reuse the parts for something else or let the teachers use them in their classrooms.

Using the bottom shelves to store these

Sensory tubs are also a big deal in our library and you would be shocked to know that the 5th graders love them just as much and the Kindergartners do.  If you want to learn more about them you can read the blog post from last year here.  http://donaldelemmediacenter.blogspot.com/2015/09/sensory-tubs.html 

These are just a few that are in the works.

Our Challenge Lab is new this year.  I have continued to struggle with running a good makerspace area where I felt the kids were really learning?  I've spent plenty of money on building things like Magnatiles, K'Nex and of course legos.  I always let the kids "play" with them but I thought maybe there needed to be some more structure or direction.  That is where the idea of a Challenge Lab came from.  Our gifted and talented teacher is doing challenges in here classroom for the entire school every week and I realized I could build off of this concept and really transform my makerspace area.

We still have a green screen wall that can be used but we also have one in another room in the building.  We have 4 different areas in there (as soon as our new bookshelves get here we will.) We will have the Challenge Tub area, the Build area, the Can you Make area, and the Electronic area.

The Challenge tubs will challenge the kids to build things with the materials provided. Each tub has a ring of pictures for them to look at and try to build.  This is where the challenge part comes in.  Everybody can build a tall tower,  but try building a 3-D object or a trap.  We have tubs with a deck or cards, unifix cubes, dixie cups, popsicle sticks and other things. There are also math challenge tubs included. 

Challenge tub cards

                                         

The Build tubs have building materials like lego's, K'NEX, Magnatiles, Straw Connectors and other building blocks. These can be used to build the same structures we have in the Challenge tubs or just free building.

The Can you Make tubs have things like sewing, bookmarks, greeting cards, weaving, rainbow loom and origami.

The electronic things are all of our robot and coding things.  

I hope you get some great ideas from this or just see what our kids are doing.