I hope everyone is enjoying the beginning of their summer holiday! I know the weather may not be the best for celebrating, but hope you're enjoying Canada Day!
I have also found another great site for listening to stories online, so check this out!! Storyline Online
I'm sorry to have to tell you that I won't be back in the library at Bear Creek next year. I would have loved to have been here again, but you have another lovely librarian coming back!
A HUGE thank you to everyone for making my year here to wonderful and I will most definitely miss everyone. Hope to see you all soon though...
Some of you may not know, but you can read books online all summer if you like!
If you go to the Bear Creek Library website (linked on this page: catalogue) or go HERE, there is a section at the bottom of the page where you can see all of the E-Books available to you! There are over 1,000 books that you can read online!!!
Since Nope: a tale of first flight was our Surrey Schools Picture Book of the Year winner and it's an almost wordless book, how about checking out some of these other wordless or almost wordless books?!
Bear Creek students voted the same book as the district for #1!
I wish there was a video on YouTube to share with you, but there isn't so, you'll have to go and borrow it from your public library to read it again! Enjoy!
Students have been working on social emotional skills (SEL) all year and we have been talking about the importance of making mistakes this week in the library.
To start, here's a little video for parents to describe what SEL is
One of the important skills that kids need to develop is resiliency and making mistakes and learning from them is part of that. We have been talking about this in the library this week while reading The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes.
Thank you so much for all of your support of the book fair and the school! We had another amazing turnout for the book fair and we sold just over $3,100 worth of books! Fabulous!! This means that the school has another $300 worth of books and $600 (cash) to spend on things that are needed in the library next year. I think some Lego might be on that list!
A HUGE thank you to all of the parent and student volunteers as this book fair wouldn't happen without you and your time! It's really appreciated!!
Our friend, Popcorn the chicken, is the main character of the story and because of the choices she makes, there are lots of lessons to be learned from her!
We spent some time talking about online safety and digital citizenship after reading this book!
THIS is a website for parents with a lot more information.
THIS has some online games to practice digital citizenship.
Our Surrey Schools book this week was called Faraway Fox. It's about a fox who gets lost in the city where his home used to be and how he finds his way back. We talked about what people can do to help animals in areas where urbanization is taking place and destroying important wildlife areas.
After reading, different classes did some different activities learning about foxes. Some of the classes watched the following video.
Some of the classes also learned about fennec foxes - the world's smallest fox!
So much to talk about and so many animals to find out about! Have fun!
The girl in the story goes through a lot of emotions, so we talked about this as we read it. Then, I showed students a picture of their brain and we talked about how these help control our emotions and that there are things we can do to help control our emotions.
We talked about our thoughts, how we can try to control them, but that it's sometimes difficult and then we did a little breathing practice from Cosmic Kids and there are a lot of other mindfulness videos here as well.
I don't know about you, but my parents read Dr. Seuss to me as a kid and I sure read it to my two boys as well! I love this quote below, but there are so many that are wonderful!
Here are just some of the many books he wrote! Which is your favourite? Add a comment and let me know! Remember to ask your parents first if that's OK and don't add any personal information!
Check out these websites to find out some very interesting things that you may not have known about Dr. Seuss:
We have been busy building in the library lately with a couple of classes! Ms. Orbeck's class was in a little over a week ago and we started by retelling the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We then read a more modern take on the story: Goldilocks and Just One Bear - which everyone loved!
We decided to combine our literacy lesson with a STEM lesson (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). The plan was to make a bed for Goldilocks using only the items provided to the students (marshmallows, popsicle sticks, mini plastic cups, straws, toothpicks, etc). The students had a picture of Goldilocks with 6 pennies attached to test their beds as they made them. When they thought they had the best bed they could make, they added more pennies one at a time! One of the groups had over 150 pennies on their bed without it collapsing.
Students then went back to class and reflected on what went well and what they could have improved! Well done Division 11! Your creativity and engineering were impressive!
Wow! What an amazing Scholastic Book Fair we had! I want to start by thanking all of our parent and student volunteers because the book fair couldn't happen without you!
We sold an unbelievable $5,300 in books which means the library is getting about $3,500 in NEW BOOKS! We are so very grateful to everyone who came in and participated.
Because our book sale was such a hit, we're going to do a second one this year from May 29th to June 1st so that you can stock up on good book s to read over the summer break!
And you can find the books for this year here
https://sites.google.com/view/surreyreads/nominees
The winner from last year was a book called "Finding Winnie" and you can see that as well as the previous winners here
https://sites.google.com/view/surreyreads/winners
The Kindergarten students are reading "Finding Winner" this week since they wouldn't have heard the story last year. This is a video with the author talking about the book:
Here's a video of the actual story as well
The Grade 1-4/5 students started the first of the 10 books today with Chris Hadfield's "The Darkest Dark". We watched him tell his own story on a CBC show called Bookaboo:
Chris Hadfield has also written a song to go with the book
What are you afraid of?
The Kindergarten students will be listening to "The Darkest Dark" next week!
I know you're getting excited, but next week is our book fair! We will have the library open at recess, lunch and for half an hour after school for you to but books. All classes have been scheduled to come into the library and you'll be able to buy books during that time as well! We will have "Books for Breakfast" On Wednesday, Feb 7th from 8-830am when you can bring your family in to look and buy books too. Lots of opportunities! Can't wait to see you there!
Remember that all funds raised go right back to the school library!
Last week, we read a book called "Beach House" to try and figure out what genre it might be. We decided that it could be both realistic fiction and adventure.
Here are some other books we have in the library that are new that you might be interested in. What genre do you think they are?
Come into the library if you want to see these books or ask about all the other great books we have! I'm happy to help you choose something you want to read!
The Kindergarten students have been having so much fun working with a Jan Brett story called "The Mitten". Here is a video of the story that we have watched that they can see again.
Hopefully, you have seen the little book that the kids brought home and this week, they'll have a paper bag "mitten" with all the animals in it that they can use to tell you the story as well.
We have been working on an author study of Mo Willems with all of the Grade 1 students and having lots of fun too!
We started with "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!" and continued with "The Pigeon Needs a Bath". Mo Willems started drawing when he was only 3 and we watched him draw Pigeon before we drew our own Pigeon pictures! They were fabulous!
Students could listen to "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus again here if they like. You may want to have them tell you what they remember about the story and then watch it. Afterwards discuss it again to see what they can add!
This is an online version of "The Pigeon Needs a Bath" as well for them to watch if they'd like!
As many of you know, my name is Colleen Heidrich and I'm the new teacher librarian here at Bear Creek Elementary! I'm very excited to be here and look forward to sharing with you the learning that is going on in our library and school!
