FEBRUARY FUN IN THE MEDIA CENTER

WOW.. have been celebrating in the media center...Groundhog's Day, Chinese New Year, 100th Day of School, President's Day, and Grandparent's Day!

Besides book displays on all of these topics, in First Grade we enjoyed having a reader's theater play on the book entitled Substitute Groundhog by Pat Miller. This story is about a groundhog who interviews other animals to come out of his hole on Groundhog Day since he is too sick to perform his once-a- year job.

In Second Grade we discovered the facts about an Australian eucalyptus forest by reading Koala Country by Deborah Dennard. This is a story about a mother Koala and her joey who feed and observe the other animal inhabitants of their fragile eucalyptus forest home. Students interacting with the book by locating the many plants and animals that live in this area. Only 20% of the forests remain for the Koala bears to live and conservation measures were also discussed.

Fifth graders were introduced to the author Gordon Korman who has written more than fifty popular young adult and middle-grade novels. Some of his books include Schooled, No More Dead Dogs, the Island, Dive and Island series, On the Run series (Chasing the Falconers) and the 39 Clues. He lives with his family on Long Island and you can visit his website at www.gordonkorman.com.

K students enjoyed the story of Valentine's Day entitled Roses Are Pink, Your Feet Really Stink by Diane de Groat. This story is about Gilbert who brings a tin of homemade cookies and his original nice or nasty poems to school on Valentine's Day. The students learned several important lessons after discussing the behavior of the characters in this story.

In 3rd grade students were introduced to idioms (a group of words whose meaning cannot be understood from the meaning of the individual words; an expression, peculiar to a specific language, that cannot be translated literally ) by reading several books. Some of the books they read were There's a Frog in my Throat by Loreen Leedy and Pat Street, A Chocolate Moose for Dinner by Fred Gwynne, and Rugs Have Naps (But Never Take Them) by Charles Klasky.

Students in Jr K enjoyed the Valentine's Day story entitled How Spider Saved Valentine's Day by Robert Kraus. Once again Spider's cleverness and wit saves the day and everyone is surprised at the end of the book.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY AND A BIG THANK YOU again to all of our library volunteers. I am so grateful to Jodi Gayoso for making sure every week the library schedule is posted and coverage is available for all the classes. All of you are so appreciated and your efforts are making the students happy to visit the media center.