7th January Old Rock Day

Old Rock Day is an opportunity to enjoy and appreciate old rocks and fossils. Perhaps you can start a rock collection. You can go in search of fossils. You can read about rocks or, if you choose, you can just play with old rocks. Not only geologists like rocks. In fact, I'm starting the year off with a display of rocks in the library and all the associated books. Below are some of the books from that display, but you could go further and look at fossil fuels as well. If you do, don't forget Molly Bang and Penny Chisolm's wonderful book Buried Sunlight.

By definition, fossils are old rocks. Jewellery stones are old rocks. And, coal is an old rock, too. You can celebrate any or all of these old rocks today!

31st December Pangolins

I'm on holidays and enjoying having time to read all sorts of things I don't usually have time for like the newspaper. Today in the Sydney Morning Herald (page18 in an article by Lindsay Murdoch), I read something alarming about pangolins, an animal I first met in a wonderful picture book by Bert Kitchen called Tenrec's Twigs. This story is set in Madagascar and has an amazing array of obscure animals, supposedly native to there. A friend visited Madagascar recently and I told her to be sure to see a tenrec and a pangolin. Well she saw a tenrec, but not the pangolin. And reading this today I wonder if that is why.
" Among the environmentalists' biggest concerns in South-east Asia is the pangolin, a scaly aardvark-like mammal that is the inspiration for Pokemon's Sandlash, a character adept at battling foes. The real-life ant-eating and nocturnal pangolins have the dubious distinction of being the most poached animal on Earth...More than 100,000 of the shy and near-sighted animals are captured every year across Africa and Asia."




The UN's Convention on International Trade and Endangered Species (CITES) has banned global trade in pangolins in the hope that they do not become extinct, a good reason too, to ensure that the students we teach know about them. I bought these two books for the library, so that when I share Tenrec's Twigs I can offer the children more to read. Not a lot, but a start without having to look through an index in a general animal  nonfiction book.

14th November Supermoon (perigee-syzygy)

We had great fun in the library today putting together a display of books that had a 'fullmoon' pictured on their covers in time for tonight's supermoon that we probably won't see here in Sydney. I love the name perigee-syzygy and couldn't wait to use it with the children. On Kidrex we learned what it was and how "The Supermoon on November 14, 2016, will be the closest a Full Moon has been to Earth since January 26, 1948. The next time a Full Moon is even closer to Earth will be on November 25, 2034".

Here's some of the books:

13th International Tongue Twister Day

Today is a day to celebrate tongue twisters! What fun! The children at school love to hear them and try themselves to say them as quickly as possible. These phrases or sentences with alliteration or a sequence of similar sounds beg to be repeated as quickly as possible without stumbling.

There are many lists of them on the internet and they appear in children's anthologies and joke books. One Kindergarten class teacher loves to do 'She sells seashells by the seashore' with her class and this year her class have really got involved by following its recitation with finding out about its origin. They learned that the 'she' refers to Mary Anning, the great fossil collector who made a living for her destitute family by selling trilobite shells on Lyme Regis beach. Much has been written about her and now there are at least three picture book biographies about her life. These are: (from my blog on 8th March)

 • Stone Girl Bone Girl by Laurence Anholt tells the story of Mary Fanning who as a ten year old child found a fossilised sea monster which was a major prehistoric discovery at the time. 
• The Fossil Girl by Catherine Brighton  
• Mary Anning by Kay Barnham.

On line here you can see this book about Mary Anning and the tongue twister. This includes information about Mary as well as a revamped version of the original song.

Whatever tongue twisters you choose to share you and the students are sure to have fun. Perhaps you can find out if Peter Piper and Betty Botter were real people too.

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7th November Marie Curie (1867 - 1934)

Today is Marie Curie's birthday and I thought it fitting to see what picture books were available to share with my young audience. Because of books such as Ada Twist, Scientist and Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World there has been renewed interest in the library for reading biographies and reading about science and women scientists. There's certainly much written about Marie Curie, but not all of it is easily accessible to under 10 year old readers. Therefore I am really looking forward to next March when another title, Marie Curie in the  Little People Big Dreams series by Isabel Sanchez Vegara  arrives in the bookshops. The other titles in this series that we have have proved to be popular and the perfect amount of words for prep school readers.

1st November Melbourne Cup

I've had fun in the library today. I took down all the Halloween display and the library looked very bare, so quickly before my first class I pulled out as many 'horse' books as I could find. Year 1 are currently undertaking a unit of inquiry on Celebrations so I thought we'd celebrate the Melbourne Cup by reading horse books. We had quite a collection. I focused on the beautiful Australian picture books of Alison Lester, Patricia Mullins and Glenda Millard but I couldn't believe how many little chapter books we had and many of these hadn't been borrowed for a long time. Five classes later and a little coercion and many of the horse books, picture books, novels and non-fiction have gone home for a visit.

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26th October - 1st November Bat Week

We've had bats flying across the windows in the library as part of a bat display for three weeks now. I cut the bats out from black cardboard folded in half (I used this Martha Stewart template) so they look as if they are flying and move if there is any breeze. They look very effective and have certainly helped the bat books be viewed and borrowed. Brian Lies' bat books which started with Bats in the Library  and now has four titles were the most popular but the pinterest list here shows that we had quite a few to choose from and several toys. Bat Week is well worth celebrating book-wise.