Welcome to the STA library
Students K-5 will be bringing home books. Please help remind your cherubs to bring the books back on library day so they can check out a new book.
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January 28, 2020: I enjoyed the Illustrated Classics version of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women so much that I decided to try out another one! I'm currently reading Jack London's The Call of the Wild!
My 40 Book Challenge door is starting to fill up! After doing an inventory of what kinds of books I had left to read, here's what I found:
So if you have any recommendations for any of those categories, I'm all ears! There is a clipboard in the library for you to write down your recommendations!
Recommendations
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The books we read during library always go deeper than just a story! Ask your children what the book teaches us about our faith.
Prayer CornerEach library class starts with a prayer from one of the books below. These books are great options for strengthening our faith at home as well!
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What's Happening in the Library?February 25, 2020: For a short month, February has been a busy one at STA! Our Pre-K 3 students have been busy reading about Arctic Animals, Dental Health, and Valentine's Day! Our two favorites over the past few weeks have been Over in the Arctic by Marianne Berkes and Bear's Loose Tooth by Karma Wilson.
Pre-K4 has been very studious as they continued to learn about robots and magnets as well as all about themselves and their families! We have finished two chapter books (Rabbit & Robot & Ribbit by Cece Bell and Penny's Doll by Kevin Henkes) during those units and our little ones have loved listening to longer books like the "big kids"!
Our Ezra Jack Keats author study in Kindergarten is now complete and we enjoyed cutting snowflakes to coincide with our reading of The Snowy Day, designing our own pet after reading Pet Show!, and sequencing Whistle for Willie! This week our kinderstars have started our unit on the Three Little Pigs by listening to Barry Moser's retelling of the story. They also colored character puppets to retell the story at home with you! Next week, we will be reading a story from the wolf's perspective! Our first grade super readers have begun delving into fairy tales--specifically Cinderella! We have read 3 of our 4 variations of the tale so far and they are getting a kick out of how the stories stay the same and how they change. They've also been introduced to a "Think, Pair, Share" model, where they go knee to knee with a partner and discuss a story element together before sharing with the group!
Ask your second grader to share with you all about the Caldecott Medal! I have been blown away by the amazing learning our second grade scholars have been doing as they learn about this specific book award! As we've learned about this honor, we've enjoyed listening to some of the previous winners of this award and will participate in our own Mock Caldecott selection over the next few weeks! They worked so hard that they got to enjoy some Lights Out in the Library time with flashlights! Our third grade apprentices have been busy learning all about the Dewey Decimal System as they've participated in scavenger hunts around the Non-Fiction section of the library. This week we started learning about the Newbery Medal award and started reading a Newbery Winner, The One and Only Ivan by Katharine Applegate.
Our 4th Graders enjoyed some relaxation time while keeping up with their 40 Book Challenges! They also started listening to their fantasy novels, Punished by David Lubar and Monsters of Morley Manor by Bruce Coville!
Our kinderstars have begun our FIRST EVER author study of Ezra Jack Keats! To kick off our study, we read Peter's Chair and did a matching activity with the baby pictures the students brought in to create their classroom timelines! We also were able to enjoy some free time reading with a buddy!
January 24, 2020: LIBRARIANS FOR A DAY!! On Friday, we celebrated our 5th grade students as the leaders of our school! Miss Smith and Miss Taub joined me in the library, reading up on some books to recommend to our students! They also got a chance to read some of their favorite picture books to students in Pre-K 3! I was so excited to have these book lovers join me for a morning in the library!
Quick Recap of last week
(January 21st, 2020) Check Out the Week's Slideshow Below 5th Graders: Lights Out in the Library 4th Graders: Extra Credit by Andrew Clement 3rd Graders: No Class due to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr Day 2nd Graders: Musical Books Book Tasting 1st Graders: Little i by Michael Hall Alphabetical Order in the Library Kindergarten: Did You Take the B from My _ook? Favorite Things activity January 17, 2020: It's the close of another great week at STA! Our fifth graders enjoyed some time catching up on some reading this week in the library!
Here's a few sneak peeks of our Kinderstars listening to Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, read by our fifth grade junior librarians, Anna and Lucia! Check back soon to see our finished Wild Things!
  January 13, 2020: Happy Monday STA Readers! On this gray day, our super-readers in 3A got a chance to start their week off with some relaxing silent reading time in the library! It was so refreshing to have time to sit and read for pleasure with our flashlights!
Our second graders also had some fun this week as they compared Jan Brett's The Mitten with last week's reading of The Missing Mitten Mystery by Steven Kellogg! To make things even more interesting, we added some hula hoops to our venn diagram!
COMING SOON!!!
Be on the look out for pictures of our kindergarten's own wild things that they created to coincide with our reading of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are! January 6, 2020: It's been a busy week in the STA Library this week! Our Pre-K 3 students enjoyed a selection of books about winter. One of their favorites was The First Day of Winter by Denise Fleming. Pre-K4 has been learning all about winter and arctic animals over the past two weeks. They thought my theatrical portrayal of Tacky the Penguin by Helen Lester was HILARIOUS! I had fun too! :)
Kindergarten, First Grade, and Second Grade students all read The Missing Mitten Mystery by Steven Kellogg this week and focused on specific reading skills. During the story, our kindergarteners focused on identifying the problem in the story and the solution to that problem. After they listened to the story, they journeyed around the library on a Mitten Sight Word Hunt! Our Kinderstars had to find the match to the sight word on their mitten before picking out a new book to bring home this week! 
Our Kindergarten students also had a visit from guest readers, Ari and Lucia, from our 5th Grade class to read Prehistoric Pinkerton, another book by Steven Kellogg about a Great Dane puppy. In case you were wondering, it was full of laughs!
Our first grade readers concentrated on using the illustrations and title of our book to make predictions about what they thought would happen next. This is a skill we will continue to practice in coming weeks using a variety of different texts. Our second grade experts started their work by brainstorming different things that we needed to remember about this story. Next week, we will read The Mitten by Jan Brett and compare and contrast the two stories in a GIANT VENN DIAGRAM! Our third grade rockstars are happy to announce that they can finally say goodbye to Stella Diaz Has Something to Say, which was their book for the Global Read Aloud 2019. Between snow days and holidays, we all agree that that book took us longer than we wanted it to!
In our fourth grade library classes, we are continuing to listen to Extra Credit by Andrew Clements about a girl from the United States who becomes pen pals with a boy in Afghanistan. I love how this book offers us a different perspective on life in other parts of the world! Lastly, our fifth grade leaders! As they start their dog-focused novel studies in their classrooms, they chose a picture book about dogs with Mrs. Cashman and will be working with a buddy to share those stories with other students in their class. What a great way to practice their reading! Who doesn't love a good read aloud? Speaking of Read Alouds....
February 5th, 2020 is World Read Aloud Day! Keep an eye out for news about how we will be celebrating this special day here at STA!
January 3, 2020: Our junior librarians have been busy helping me get our book displays ready for the new year and our second grade boys are ready to dive into some amazing biographies this month!
WHO WILL YOU BE IN 2020?
  ATTENTION
BOOK CLUB MEMBERS!! Our next Lunch Bunch Book Club meeting will be held on Thursday, January 30th! In preparation for this meeting, we will be discussing WHO WILL YOU BE IN 2020? and you should read a biography of your choice before our meeting! Any questions or need recommendations? Please check in with me!
January 2, 2020: Welcome back! I hope everyone enjoyed their winter break. I enjoyed spending time with family and taking Evie to Disney for the the first time! We all had a blast!
Before the break, we focused on our listening skills in Kindergarten and First Grade through a series of directed drawings related to the books we were reading. In Kindergarten, we read Click, Clack, Ho! Ho! Ho! by Doreen Cronin and completed drawings of Santa Duck getting stuck in the chimney! In First Grade, we created reindeer directed drawings to complement our reading of The Wild Christmas Reindeer by Jan Brett. Our AMAZING Junior Librarians helped to make this project run smoothly!
    Our second grade students LOVE finding comfy spots to enjoy some independent reading time or to read with a friend!
Our fifth grade students also enjoyed some time with our kindergarteners during a special edition of Lights Out in the Library, where our older students read to the younger ones, with flashlights! It was a nice way to end the week before break and I hope that we can do more collaborations like that in the future!
December 19, 2019: Today we enjoyed our third book lunch bunch book club meeting of the school year! We discussed the Nutmeg Nominees that we had read in the month since our last meeting and enjoyed some winter photo booth fun! Looking forward to seeing all of these great 4th and 5th graders at our January meeting!!
December 13, 2019: The 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students from St. Timothy Middle School arrived in the library today to read with their STA buddies! Everyone had a great time reading to each other, relaxing in a comfy spot, and enjoying many of their favorite books, both old and new!
November 22, 2019: Yesterday we enjoyed our second lunch bunch book club meeting! I didn't think it was possible but our numbers grew even more! Our fourth and fifth grade participants watched book trailers of the 2020 Nutmeg Nominees and were tasked with choosing three of the ten nominees to read before April when we will send in our votes to see who the winner of the 2020 Nutmeg Award will be! Our students are already so excited to have a place in choosing the winner!
November 13, 2019: Happy World Kindness Day!! Our students were given the opportunity to write Kindness Cards to someone in their lives, whether at home or at school, and spread a little kindness! It has been a huge hit and I hope to keep the opportunity open and available for students to use throughout the rest of the year!
November 11, 2019: Veteran's Day is always a special day to celebrate for me, as Mr. Atkins is in the military. To recognize this special day, our kindergarten students listened to My Daddy is A Hero that we borrowed from Evie's collection at home! We loved seeing all of the different ways that those in the military help others!
November 5, 2019: NONFICTION NOVEMBER has begun in the Library! Nonfiction titles have been featured in our book displays this month and our Kindergarten boys are especially big fans of the books they've found!
October 31, 2019: Today we celebrated our love of reading in our FIRST EVER lunch bunch book club!! 24 Fourth and Fifth Grade students spent lunch and recess with Mrs. Cashman and I as we discussed what books we were reading, read a spooky story with a flashlight, and made recommendations to friends! What a great way to end the month!
October 28, 2019: To kick off NONFICTION NOVEMBER next week, our kindergarten students were able to take an in-depth look at animals in our world while reading Steve Jenkins' book Actual Size. As a follow-up activity, students painted their hands to see how they MEASURE UP to the actual size of a gorilla's hand!
October 15, 2019: We had a special visitor visit us in the library last week! Looks like the Pigeon did decide to come to school after all!!
  October 9, 2019: Happy October! We have been very busy this month so far as we kicked off the Global Read Aloud in our STA community! For more information about this AMAZING program, please click the Global Read Aloud 2019 tab above!
Our preschool students have been busy learning about apples, farms, fall and leaves! We have been enjoying books to go along with those classroom themes! Our K-5 students have been focusing on books related to the Global Read Aloud described above as well as books that celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month! Second grade students had a few minutes to spare this week to enjoy our first LIGHTS OUT IN THE LIBRARY this year! Our upper school students are also participating in Mrs. Atkins's 40 Book Challenge, where they are being tasked with reading a certain amount of books from now until the end of school in June! Our Fourth Graders are doing an in-depth dive into our Genre Review to help them accomplish this CHALLENGE! September 24, 2019: I am looking forward to seeing you all for a special Story Time in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month today (Tuesday, September 24th) after school at the Book Fair! We will be sharing stories in both English and Spanish! All are welcome!!
Looking to get some holiday or birthday shopping checked off your list? On Thursday (September 26th), our Book Fair will be open for a PARENTS ONLY shopping event from 8:15-8:45 AM. Bagels and coffee will be available as you shop! We hope that you can join us afterward for our Opening of School Mass! September 23, 2019: In the first couple of weeks of school, we have been very busy in the library getting ready for a new year of learning and fun!
All of our students have begun practicing our Library Expectations, and let me tell you, I AM SO IMPRESSED!! Our preschool students have been busy learning about the alphabet, apples, and the farm and enjoying books to go along with those classroom themes! Our kindergarten students have completed Book Interest Surveys, learned about book care and how to use shelf markers, and have been introduced to the parts of a book! Our first and second grade learners have been completing scavenger hunts to find out where certain books are in the library, as well as beginning to learn about choosing GOOD FIT books for them! Our third grade scholars have been learning all there is to know about the library and the vocabulary that we use when we are there! Our fourth graders have amazed me with the maps they created of our library space and our fifth grade leaders are reading some awesome books to tie in with their beginning of the year novel studies! These upper school students are also participating in Mrs. Atkins's 40 Book Challenge, where they are being tasked with reading a certain amount of books from now until the end of school in June! The tricky part is that they must read from a variety of genres! The Book Fair is here! I repeat, the Book Fair is here!! What an exciting time for our awesome STA readers! Students (K-5) will visit during their scheduled library time. The Book Fair will also be open in the morning (8-8:30 AM) and after school from 2:30-3 PM (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday) and from 1:30-2 PM (Wednesday). Students who want to attend the Book Fair before or after school must attend with an adult. August 12, 2019: Welcome back, STA readers! I can't wait to start this amazing year of learning and fun!
And don't forget! The book fair will be at our school in September!!! |
