Crescent Elementary

 We have a small pre-lit Christmas tree that we use as part of our holiday decorations in the media center. We  have made ornaments to go on that tree that tie in with the library. We took several old catalogs that are sent to our school, the ones that are used for ordering books. We cut out the small pictures that show the cover of the books, mounted those pictures on small pieces of styrofoam cut the size of those pictures, then trimmed the edges of the styrofoam with red ribbon trim. We used small paper clips to shape an ornament hook, poked that into the styrofoam and placed the ornaments on the tree. The children loved looking at them and many of them asked where they could find that book in our library.  

DraperElementary

Title: Santasaurus
grades: all
The students enjoyed this fun book about Christmas with dinosaurs.
Title : Polar Express
grades: all
We did this Christmas favorite as a book on tape. It was fun and the students enjoyed it  alot.
Title: A creature was Stirring
grade: all
This story was very fun. It was the story of the night before Christmas and all so a little boys events that happened on the night before
Christmas.
We also did some lessons.

We talked about the Arctic and Antarctica and did a slide show. The students enjoyed this a lot

Sprucewood

Title:  Pizza, Pigs & Poetry 

Author:  Jack Prelutsky

Grade:   4-6

During December we shared this book by Jack Prelutsky, which is also one of the Utah Beehive Nominees.  Jack Prelutsky shares many ideas on how to write poetry, including some of his own childhood experiences from which he gleaned ideas for his poems.  He offers tips, advice and secrets about writing and provides some fun exercises to help you get started on a poem.  The kids loved hearing the stories that his poems were based on.  If you are a poet, want to become a poet or just want to try to write a poem, you need to read this book. 

Altara's December Blog

Title: "Snowflake Bentley" By Jacqueline Briggs Martin

3-6th grades

This is a fascinating book about the life of one of the first men to photograph snowflakes. It received the Caldecott Medal in 1999. The pictures are wonderful. We paired it with "Snow Crystals", which is the photography book that has William Bentley's work in it. It's fun to look at these old photos of thousands of snowflakes. After reading the book we had paper and scissors out for those students who wanted to cut out a snowflake, which we now have hanging from our ceiling in the media center.

Title: "The Twelve Days of Christmas" By Hillary Knight

1-6th grades (We were just going to do this with the younger grades but decided to include the older grades as well)

This is just the traditional poem/song of the Twelve days of Christmas. While we read the book to the classes we had twelve students standing up in front with a sign that read "A Partridge in a pear tree", "two turtle doves, "three french hens, etc. While we read the book each of the students with the signs on had to do an action that went along with their sign. Partridge in a pear tree had to stand with their arms in a circle above their heads and had to say "Cheep" in a high voice when we read their part. After we read the book we had the whole class stand and sing the last verse with everyone doing all of the actions together. This was a blast, the students loved it.

***We loved the idea of Halloween jokes that one of the other schools did. We don't have any wall space in out media center so we typed up Christmas jokes and taped 3-4 of them on each of our tables.

Altara

I've seen jokes posted in the library, but Altara posted Christmas jokes on the tables in the library.  My personal favorite was: "What do you call Santa's anual barn dance?  A Ho, Ho, Ho Down!

~Susan Huff

Alta View Elementary

Title: The Black Book of Color
Author: Menena Cottin
The response from the students as this book was read was amazing to see! They sat so quiet as their imagination caused some of them to close their eyes. How would they describe colors they had never seen? Their descriptive imaginations blossomed!

Columbia Elementary

This month the PTA at Columbia hosted a bookfair at Barnes and Noble and had authors and an illustrator there.  Greg Newbold who illustrated the book "The Barnyard Night Before Christmas" was the illustrator so we read his book that week.  It is a version of the Night Before Christmas and the kids loved it. Cute story and the pictures are great.  The author of the book is Beth Terrill.

November Blog from Crescent

November Pair and share:

We asked the children what they liked most about Thanksgiving and then asked them how they would feel if there was no Thanksgiving. We explained to them that if it had not been for the courage and determination of Sarah Hale we might not have Thanksgiving. We gave a short biography of  Sarah Hale and then discussed with the children how the “pen can be mightier than the sword” and what that meant. We read the book “Thank you Sarah: the woman who saved Thanksgiving.”  We talked with the children  about how one person can make a difference and then let them share some of their thoughts and ideas.  Then we read “Mr. Lincoln’s whiskers” to them. The children loved both of the books and were impressed by the fact that even a child can make a difference if they are determined enough to change things.

Sunrise Elementary

Book: Turk and Runk
Author: Lisa Wheeler
This is a hilarious Thanksgiving book about a turkey farm and one family of turkeys thinks that people come to the farm for reasons other than finding a turkey to Roast. The youngest turkey knows better, but no one ever listens to him until the end. It's our favorite and the kids really love it.
Book: I'm a Turkey
Author: Arnosky
This was a book that you could download the Author singing the words and it was very cute. The kids loved it and we also talked about how many turkeys are produced in utah every year. (answer 5 million)

Altara

Title: " Thank You, Sarah " by Laurie Halse Anderson
and
"One Is A Feast for Mouse" by Judy Cox
We have been teaching our third graders about the Dewey Decimal System and have been sharing books from each specific section with them. For Thanksgiving we chose to read a book from the 300's section called, "Thank You, Sarah". It is a story of how a lady named Sarah Hale saved Thanksgiving by writing letters and articles to politicians tp try to convince them that the whole country needed to have a day set aside to be thankful for all that we have. At that time, only those who lived in the New England States celebrated Thanksgiving. It took her thirty-eight years and thousands of letters before Thanksgiving was made a national holiday. In the year 1863 President Lincoln made it an official holiday.
We paired this non fiction book about Thanksgiving with a fiction book called, "One Is A Feast For Mouse, A Thanksgiving Tale". This book has great pictures for the kids and a fun tale about a mouse whose eyes are bigger than his stomach. The Kids loved reading this book and I think they were a little hungry after reading about all the good food!