What's Happening at the BSS Library?

Several of the 4th graders had heard of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol or had seen the movie. A few had even seen the Disney cartoon featuring Scrooge McDuck as Ebenezer Scrooge. We read the abridged version of the story, which was illustrated by Brett Helquist (who also illustrated Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events). We read about miserly Scrooge and saw how he treated his worker Bob Cratchitt and how he scoffed at his nephew Fred for wishing his uncle a Merry Christmas. When he was visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past, we learned what his life was like when he was younger, and found some evidence about why he acted so miserable all the time. The Ghost of Christmas Present showed his family celebrating and despite his lack of Christmas spirit and never showing love to his family, they were toasting Scrooge and wishing him well. He also saw the inadequate Christmas meal the Cratchitts were eating, and noticed how sickly their son Tiny Tim was looking. When t...

  In 2nd grade, we learned how fables are a type of folktale, which are stories that were passed down orally over the years until they were finally written down.  Fables typically feature animals as the characters, who learn a lesson in the story. We read Pop-Up Aesop by John Harris and Caleb Brown, which featured several fables such as the Tortoise and the Hare. Students were asked to guess what the moral of each fable was, and we even made up our own fable on the spot. After reading, we watched a very interesting video about how pop-up books are made.

It really is the most wonderful time of the year, not only because of the fun parties and spirit of Christmas but because I get to read some fantastic Christmas books!  Here are a few of the great books we've been reading this month. THROUGH THE ANIMALS EYES BY CHRISTOPHER WORMELL Each page in this story about the first Christmas features beautiful wood cut illustrations shown from the perspective of a different animal. The pictures are stunning, and the students had even more appreciation for them after we watched a demonstration video of a man creating a wood cut print. He shows how he creates the the design onto wood, then he carves it, applies ink, and shows how he transfer the image to paper. The attention to detail and the time it took to create one image was incredible.  RED AND LULU BY MATT TAVARES This book is so beautiful. It tells the story of two cardinals whose tree is chopped down with Lulu still in the nest! Red can't believe it when he comes home after gatheri...

I feel like March is such a long month...with no vacations or school days off. But we can make it fun by reading some great books! Every year I like to have students participate in March Book Madness where books go up against each other and students vote which one should move on to the next round. I use the books from this website:  https://marchbookmadness.weebly.com . Here are this year's selections: I've linked read alouds to each book so we can be informed voters when it comes time to choose! Click here to listen to the readalouds . I will be showing these videos to Grades 1-3 the first two weeks in March while I am in their cohort.  Hopefully we have time to watch them all! I will keep everyone posted on how the voting goes!