Thanksgiving Visits & Read-Alouds

Two days before the holiday, I spent some time the New Hampton Community School reading a Thanksgiving book to each class. What good listeners the kids were and we had some interesting conversations based on parts of the books. I hope it was as much fun for the children as it was for me!! Thanks to Ms. Holloran and the teachers there for allowing me this time to visit classrooms!  

Storytime: The Mitten

This week at the library, we read The Mitten, the classic wintertime story based on a Ukrainian folktale about a child who loses a mitten in the snow and the animals that try to squeeze into it for warmth. There are many versions of this tale - at Thursday Storytime, we read this one by Jim Aylesworth. 

We also scanned the pictures in the Jan Brett version of The Mitten and talked briefly about what was the same and what was different in the two versions of the same story. 

Then the children decorated a paper mitten using foam shapes, colored paper dots, crayons, and cotton balls. They left with some cut-out animals to put into their mitten to retell and reenact the story of The Mitten at home. 

Later in the day, students came for Storytime from the local Saplings Nature School. We read the same two versions of The Mitten and compared and contrasted in more depth. After we briefly discussed the concept of symmetry, students fashioned their own matching pair of card stock mittens. 

As students worked, we found and watched a third version of The Mitten, this one published in book form in the 1960s. We wondered how many other versions there were of this old folktale!

We decided to write our own unique version of the story! Here's how it begins: 

There was once a child who went on a wintertime adventure to a frozen pond. He wore his bright, colorful mittens so he could find them if he took them off. And took them off, he did - to tie his skates! He forgot his mitten as he was skating away.

We also brainstormed a list of animals and chose some action verbs to go with some of them. I can't wait to continue our folktale next week! Check back here for the rest of the story!

B-HVS Holiday Celebration

Again this year, I was invited to be a part of today's Holiday Celebration for the students at Bridgewater-Hebron Village School. I brought holiday books from the Gordon-Nash and a few special ones from my personal Christmas collection. Students were able to listen to a read-aloud, draw, color, or browse books on their own. Favorite books were If You Ever Want to Bring a Pirate to Meet Santa, Don't! by Elise Parsley and The LEGO Night Before Christmas illustrated (with LEGO!) by Amanda Brack. Also a hit was The Night Before Christmas illustrated by B-HVS's Administrative Assistant, Mrs. Hunewill, when she was a Newfound third grader.

It was wonderful to see so many of our former Storytime patrons at their school! Thanks to Ms. Connor at B-HVS for inviting the Gordon-Nash to be an important part of this memorable school tradition.

Crazy 8s Club: "Road Trip"

The New Hampton Community School After School Program kids used a math skills to calculate mileage and gas consumption as they drove their vehicles from coast to coast. In the process, they learned about cardinal and ordinal directions, the patterns in our interstate highway numbers, and practiced with the abbreviations for each state.

Local Writers' Science Fiction!

Fourth and fifth Grade writers from the New Hampton Community School have their science fiction work on display at the Gordon-Nash during our "Universe of Stories" Summer Reading Program. In early June, students were challenged to compose an original piece, then illustrate it by drawing a book cover. The last week of school, an assembly was held, with each contributor receiving a certificate for their work and first place prizes of a free book.

Fourth grade writing is on the bulletin board at the landing of the rear staircase. Fifth grade writing can be found in a basket in the periodical section. Please take a few minutes to a look at this creative and imaginative work by our local student writers!

Special thanks to NHCS teachers Melissa Markey and Angie Bergholm for working with us this year and in the past. Thanks to the Friends of the Gordon-Nash Library for sponsoring this program and providing wonderful science books as prizes. Kudos to Gretchen Draper - resident, “Friend”, and teacher-consultant for the National Writing Project in NH - for organizing this yearly collaborative program with our local school.

LEGO Club 2018-2019

Another fantastic year of LEGO Club is in the books! We spent the May and June sessions thinking about what kinds of living conditions astronauts must need when they spend time in space. Each child built a section for a Space Station and, before we left for the last time, they were all attached into one huge space vehicle. It's on display for the summer in the reference section of the library. Come and look!

We had a blast this year! A big thank you to the parents who let their kids come to the library after school for this club and to Mrs. Troup at New Hampton Community School who made sure everyone arrived safely. Thanks also to club founder Mike Dowal for sharing his LEGO expertise and knowledge with eager learners. Finally, thanks to Wallingford's Inc of New Hampton who graciously donated funds so kids could have an after-school snack before each LEGO Club began.

I'm looking forward to next year's LEGO Club already!

Read Across Newfound

This week, I was invited to Bridgewater-Hebron Village School as part of their annual Read Across Newfound week celebrating books and reading. I was a guest reader in Mrs. McLean's second grade classroom. I read two books to the second graders, both about animals. The Circus Ship by Chris Van Dusen is one of my favorites, based on a true story about a ship full of circus animals that sunk in the North Atlantic. This book is fiction, though, and we talked about what made it so - the funny animals, the humorous story, the characters in the book. Next we read Out of the Woods by Rebecca Bond, also based on a true story from the author's family. It involved humans and animals seeking shelter in a lake, and we briefly talked about the likelihood of such an event happening as depicted in the book. Before I left, I gave each student an animal bookmark to color. The students were a wonderful audience with good insights into each story. Thanks to B-HVS for giving me this outreach opportunity for fun with great kids!

2019 Caldecott Award

The Caldecott Medal is awarded annually by the American Library Association to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children. This year's winner is Hello Lighthouse by Sophie Blackwell. I took this beautifully illustrated book to the NHCS Kindergarten this month and we read it together. 

The book tells the story of a lighthouse keeper and his mission to keep his light lit. Children were surprised and delighted to see that the lighthouse keeper lived in the lighthouse. Several liked the idea that a tender came to the lighthouse regularly to deliver food, mail, and even visitors! Kids noted that the lighthouse keeper and eventually his family took good care of the lighthouse and some were sad when they all had to leave. But everyone agreed that the ending was satisfying and happy. You will have to read Hello Lighthouse yourselves to see why!

Why Read? Celebration

Each June the Friends of the Gordon-Nash Library sponsor the Why Read/Why Write essay contest at the New Hampton Community School. Gretchen Draper, New Hampton resident, Gordon-Nash Friend, and teacher-consultant for the National Writing Project in NH, organizes the contest which is open to all fourth and fifth graders at the New Hampton Community School. The theme of the library's Summer Reading Program is the basis for the writing and drawing that the students do, and, after judging, their finished work is displayed at the library during the summer months.

This year, students wrote about why "Libraries Rock!" Books, CDs and DVDs, programs, after school program connections, and helpful staff were some of the things students wrote about in their essays. Writers also created posters to accompany their essays. Judging was very difficult this year - there were many wonderful ideas and well-worded essays.

An assembly was held at the school, where all writers received a Certificate of Participation and a Why Read Why Write bookmark. First place winners in each grade level were awarded their choice of book purchased by the Friends. Students' essays and posters will be on display upstairs at the Gordon-Nash during the Summer months. Stop in to see them!

School Visits

Yesterday and today, I visited classrooms at the New Hampton Community School to talk about summer fun at the Gordon-Nash Library. We discussed the importance of summer reading and how much fun it can be. Students asked questions about tracking reading progress and the prizes associated with reading and library visits. I described our Tuesday night family presentations and listed our Wednesday night movies. Each student received a "Libraries Rock!" bookmark to take home with a complete schedule of Summer Reading Program events printed on the back.

Since this is the summer that "Libraries Rock", I wanted to leave kids with a "rockin'" story. I chose Punk Farm by Jarrett J. Krosoczka because everyone knows the song in it! At the appropriate part of the story, I turned on my disco ball bluetooth speaker and played the Punk Farm version of "Old MacDonald Had a Farm." As music blasted and colored lights danced across classroom walls and ceilings, we laughed and sang along to the story. No photos - but here's the book trailer! Many thanks to NHCS teachers for inviting me into their classrooms at such a busy time of year!

After School Program Reading Celebration

I was honored to be guest reader for this year's New Hampton Community School After School Program's Literacy Day. I read one of my favorite stories, Clever Jack Takes the Cake by Candace Fleming. In this story, Jack a poor village boy, gets invited to the princess's birthday party so he works hard to make her a beautiful birthday cake. As he is traveling to the party, he runs into all sorts of problems - trolls, giants, magical places - lots of elements found in fairy tales! In the end, Jack reaches the party with a very surprising gift!

After the story, kids got to pick two books to take home for the summer. There were so many great titles provided by the organizers that I would have had a hard time making a choice! When everyone had their books, we sat and READ! What a great event!

Thanks to the After School Program for inviting me to be part of this wonderful afternoon!

Finally, Spring!

This was the week we finally read the books I've been saving since Spring appeared on the April calendar! In Fletcher and the Springtime Blossoms by Julia Rawlinson, Fletcher thought he saw snow so he warned all his animal friends that it was still winter! Spring is Here by Will Hillenbrand told how Mole, who knew it was Spring, wanted to celebrate with his sleeping friend Bear. In Mouse's First Spring by Lauren Thompson, Mouse experiences Spring for the first time with his Momma. Our last book, When Spring Comes by Kevin Henkes, tells what our world looks like as we wait for Spring.

We made spring flowers with pipe cleaner stems and creative flower heads - made from paper, foam, tiny cups, cupcake papers, and more!

A few days later, kids came from the New Hampton Community School's After School Program, and listened to Fletcher and the Springtime Blossoms. Then they too made flowers with the same materials. Here are some of their creations!

Crazy 8s Club: Funny Money

The Crazy 8s Math Club this week worked with coins to determine values and to have fun! We decided that coins are handy in case something doesn't cost a whole dollar. Also coins like quarters are good because it's easier to carry that coin than twenty-five pennies!

We won rulers and pencils by quickly combining coins of the correct value. 

We also played a game like Son of Rock, Paper, Scissors, where one coin could beat out another of a higher value - except for a penny, which could beat a quarter. We secretly chose a coin, then said, "Penny, Nickel, Dime, Quarter" and then showed our partner our coin. The player whose coin had the highest value won that hand. 

Crazy 8s: It's About Time!

we began this week's Crazy 8s Club by discussing time and the way it can be measured. We talked about big and small chunks of time, and made a list on the whiteboard. Hours, minutes, seconds, decade, century, millenium...we came up with lots of words! We talked about months, then lined up in birthday order (including Mrs. Markey and Mrs. Hunewell). We learned a knuckle method of recalling how many days there are in each of the months.

Then we worked with stopwatches! We practiced starting, stopping, and resetting our stopwatches. We estimated how long twenty seconds might be by starting the stopwatch and stopping it when we thought the time was up. We timed each other doing "ridiculous challenges" like standing in a yoga stork pose or dabbing.

It was not easy to estimate time, but we found that the more we did it, the more accurate our guesses became. Be careful if you tell us to wait a minute, because we may!!

Crazy 8s Club: Sound Investigations

This week's Crazy 8s Club at the New Hampton Community School After School Program dealt with pitch and volume.  After cutting straws into specific graduated sizes, we taped them together to make a pan flutes, investigated the relationship between a straw's length and its pitch as we worked.

We also used a sound meter app to see how loud we could play and how that measurement changed when we factored in distance. 

Here's the completed flute, and an able player!

Crazy 8s: Glow-in-the-dark Geometry & Pattern

We began a new "Crazy 8s" Math Club this week with twelve 3rd, 4th and 5th graders from the Project Promise After School Program at New Hampton Community School. This eight week program will reinforce math skills in a fun and experiential way!

This week we built geometric shapes out of glowsticks. First, we made different kinds of triangles, like equilateral and isosceles, then we made four-sided shapes like trapezoids, parallelograms, rhombuses, rectangles, and squares. 

Then, working together, we made repeating patterns on the floor. Certain regular polygons worked perfectly, like triangles, squares, and hexagons. We had to work closely with each other to be sure our shapes were accurately made so the pattern could continue. We also figured the area and perimeter of some of our biggest shapes!

How many triangles do you see in the shape below? 

Count carefully!

Tradition!

As I have in year's past, today I read Christmas books and stories to small groups at Bridgewater-Hebron Village School's Day Before Holiday Break Celebration. I'm amazed that students remember books I've read from one year to the next, and request them! This outreach opportunity is starting to feel like a holiday tradition - one that I anticipate and enjoy! Thanks to B-HVS for asking me back!