Library Love

I am a library lover.  Always have been, always will.  I will wait a year for a book on hold at the library and get super excited about it when it finally comes in.  I download audiobooks to listen to on my commute.  My kids and I have been frequenting the public library's children's collections and have attended countless programs there for the last 12 years..  And oh yeah, I teach in one.



Just recently, a trip to the library initiated learning about specific authors with my kids - our at home "author study".  For the first one we checked out books by Eric Carle, then watched a video of him demonstrating his special technique to create his drawings.  At home we recreated his works!  It took several days of painting, drying, then cutting and collaging - but the results were worth it!  They looked amazing and the kids (and me) were so proud of recreating this technique.

The next author we studied was Dr. Seuss.  For this author we went to see a performance at the public library done by a local theater that was producing Seussical the Musical. Here they performed Horton Hears aWho.  Then at home we stretched our thinking by rewriting the ending. Which led to amazing discussions about this book.  

Finally, we checked out books by Amy Krause Rosenthal, one of my personal favorites.  The kid's fell in love with Duck! Rabbit! and argued their points about whether they thought the character in the book was a Duck or a Rabbit, then used the app My Story on our iPad to explain their thinking. We tweeted it out to the author and illustrator and Tom Lichentenheld responded!!!

Learning does not have to be complicated and hard.  You can find something to learn about it every experience you have - especially trips to the library!