Lorraine Visits

Today my DFW adviser, Lorraine Bruce, visited Bush to check on me. We talked about Facebook and how great the Bush School library is. She only stayed briefly, but it was a nice visit.

We recorded the 3rd grade Readers’ Theater and it went so well. I’m going to fix a few things with Audacity on Friday and then I’ll try to post them here.

Today in Readers’ Advisory:

• Horse Books in series:Thoroughbred
• Black History Books: Henry’s Freedom Box, Jalani and the Lock
• Ballet Books: Graphic Novel (winner of Siebel), Tallchief biography, PNW Ballet book
• Rock Music: Crosby Stills and Nash CD
• Funny Dog Books (read-alike for Chowder, What Pete Ate A-Z)
• Mom volunteer wanted a book to read to her 3- , 4- , and 5-year-old crowd: Charlotte’s Web. Many Moons (If You Decide to Go to the Moon read-alike).
• Hockey Books
• Lego Books (Bush only has one and it was checked out)
• Trickster Tales (Tops and Bottoms)

One small highlight from my day: We had some time with the kindergarteners before they had to go to P.E. today, so I played Simon Says with them. It is really fun to be Simon. Also, tomorrow is their 100th day of Kindergarten. Congats, kiddos.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Yesterday was a busy Wednesday at the Bush library. Here’s what went down:

3rd grade: Jody and I returned the kids’ computer catalog worksheets and talked about some of the problems we saw. Then we split into groups to do Readers Theatre. I took 10 kids to do “The Miller and his Donkey” and Jody took 4 to do a modern Cinderella. I assigned parts to the kids and we read through the play. We talked about Aesop and the moral of the story. I gave them some notes on how they could improve their storytelling, too. Next week is Mid-Winter break, but the week after that, we’ll record the plays.

Kindergarten and 2nd grade: I performed a story for the little ones today: “The Monkey’s Heart” which is an old Sawhili/Indian (depending on the version you read) tale. I wrote my own version to connect it to Valentine’s Day and when one of the students suggested a really good alternative ending, I put it in my final telling and the kids really liked it. Jody and I talked to the students about the differences between storytelling and story reading, too.

As usual, after we finish our story room time, Jody and I help the kids pick out books. I had, as usual, many requests for Star Wars. I also did some readers’ advisory with a boy who said the last thing he really enjoyed was a Woody Guthrie cd. So we found him a book about Woody Guthrie so he could learn more. There were also two 2nd grade girls who wanted to read the same book together. I helped them find books by just browsing the Beginning Readers section of the library. It’s not very big and we have a few duplicates there (though, in general, the Bush library has very few duplicates).

When I had some free time today, I also checked the catalog to see which books Bush already had from a list of Notable Picture Books Jody gave me. Bush only had 3 out of 12, so I think they’ll be ordering some.

I also contributed to a list Lindy and Lisa were making for a student designing an independent study. She wants to look at how written works are interpreted as movies, so I suggested we look at the list of Oscar nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay. I also had a few favorites that I suggested:

• Clueless, based on Emma by Jane Austen
• The Shawshank Redemption, based on the short story by Stephen King
• The Hours, based on the book by Michael Cunningham and Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• One Flew Over the Cuckoos Next, based on the book by Ken Kesey
• The Golden Compass, based on the book by Philip Pullman

When I took my storytelling class last quarter, we made a list of “fillers” or things you can do when you have a few minutes and a bunch of kids. I already knew a ton from my experience with preschoolers, and today I had a chance to use one while the kindergarteners waited to go to P.E. I lead them in a chorus of theme song from “The Elephant Show” which goes like this:

Skinnamarink e-dink e-dink
Skinnamarink e-doo
I love you.

Skinnamarink e-dink e-dink
Skinnamarink e-doo
I love you.

I love you in the morning
and in the afternoon.
I love you in the evening
underneath the moon.

Skinnamarink e-dink e-dink
Skinnamarink e-doo
I love you.

I love you in the morning
and in the afternoon.
I love you in the evening
underneath the moon.

Oh, Skinnamarink e-dink e-dink
Skinnamarink e-doo
I love you.
I do.