Stories To Light Up Our Night @ St Martin’s

Our ‘Stories To Light Up Our Night’  Book Week event on Wednesday night was a magical evening of sharing and celebrating stories with our families, friends and as a school community. It was a wonderful example that books and reading are alive and well at St Martin’s.

The excitement almost rivalled a football Grand Final as children wearing their pyjamas and armed with pillows, returned to school under cover of darkness with their parents to enjoy an hour of stories in their classrooms and the LRC. Thank you to the 150+ families (over 350 parents and children) and fabulous storytelling teachers who made it an evening to remember…

What did you enjoy most at ‘Stories To Light Up Our Night’?

Kicking Goals For Readers

Now the first official performance of Kicking Goals For Readers has been performed I can publish this blog post…

It was a HUGE day for reading and football on Friday, June 19th at St Martin’s!

Excitement was bubbling to Grand Final fever pitch as our 21 classes gathered in our hall to watch the highly anticipated stage performance of Kicking Goals For Readers by footy authors Felice Arena, Michael Wagner and Adrian Beck. These popular authors whose footy books cover from P-6 are combining their many talents ‘to take the action from the page to the stage’…  

Wearing our footy colours and passionately singing along to footy team songs everyone was in the footy spirit. The hall erupted with laughter as Felice Arena emerged doing his ‘Umpire Dance’ and some rather fancy footy tricks! The scene was set for a combination of Aussie Rules football, music, multimedia, books and lots of fun.

There were so many parts of the show to enjoy, including each author performing a unique version of his footy team song. Who would have thought “Good Old Collingwood” could be sung as a folk song and be surprisingly soothing? We laughed at the video of the authors taking on 1GC’s Egg Handball Challenge and an unlucky author who ended up with egg on his face. Felice helped our very own ‘Specky Magee’ in Year 6 show us how to take a slow motion Specky while we all had fun barracking silently in slow motion. Imagine a capacity crowd barracking like this on Grand Final day at the MCG!

We also enjoyed listening to each author speak about his books and writing journey and the positive messages each imparted about writing, following your dreams and having a passion for what you do. It was also interesting to hear about the different paths that led each of them to becoming authors and great to see them collaborating with their show.

One thing for certain is that we will never look at umpires in the same way again after watching the dance moves in the hilarious “Umpire Funk” led by Felice with our very own Mr O and Mr Z. We might have to try out some “Umpire Funk” on our Footy Day in September with Mr O leading the way with his groovy freestyle dance moves. At the end of the show we noticed that the windows in our hall had actually steamed up from all of the fun and excitement!  

After using lots of energy performing, our authors happily greeted long lines of eager fans and generously spent the afternoon in our library signing books and chatting with each child. It was a delight to see the looks on children’s faces as they met Felice, Michael and Adrian. There was such a wonderful buzz at the end of the day as students rushed to tell their parents about the performance and show them their signed books! Our authors had definitely achieved their goal of Kicking Goals For Readers and ‘taking the action from the page to the stage’…  

Enjoy watching some of the highlights of Kicking Goals For Readers 

I use Twitter professionally to connect with other educators and love the opportunity it also provides to interact with authors like Felice, Michael and Adrian. When Felice asked if they could trial their show with our school before their first official performance I was surprised, excited (and a tad nervous), but in the end I was SO glad I said “Yes”!  It provided me with a wonderful opportunity to do one of the most important jobs teacher librarians do…bringing children, books and authors together.

Thank you Felice, Michael and Adrian for an amazing experience for our school and a fabulous and fun celebration of books, reading and footy!  

Footy, footy, footy!
Read, read, read!

Books Light Up Our World in our Library

free glitter text and family website at FamilyLobby.com

This year all of our students will have contributed to our library display for Book Week…

In Week Three, each student in their library class was given a light bulb to draw a book that has lit up their life. A book that has made them happy or sad or moved them in some way, or a book that has taken them on an adventure, made them think or taught them something.  By the end of the week after 21 classes we had 468 light bulbs! (Students who were absent will have a chance to add their light bulb too so hopefully we will have approximately 530 book light bulbs around our library). 

I had hoped to put all of the light bulbs together to create one large light bulb BUT we had a few too many light bulbs for that idea! So lots of light bulbs are also displayed around our library ‘lighting’ it up with books. It has been wonderful to see students excitedly searching for their light bulb, looking at the books other students have drawn or seeing who else likes their book.

On Friday our fireflies reading books were added to our display and each one has a message about books.

Books….
Brighten our day
Ignite our curiosity
Fuel our minds
Illuminate our understanding
Warm our hearts
Spark our imagination

Can you find your book light bulb on our slideshow?

Which book did you choose for your light bulb?

Most books toppled in a domino fashion – Guinness World Records

What a lot of fun with books…

On January 28, 2015 the most books toppled in a domino fashion was achieved by United Biscuits (UK) in Old Windsor, West Berkshire, UK using the Guinness World Records 2015 edition books. The toppling of the books lasted 2 min 27 seconds and they created a new Guinness World record of 5,318 books!!

I wonder how the participants went about planning the winning layout and how long it took to set the books up.  You can almost feel the tension as the Guinness Book of Records official announced she had to disqualify 182 books…

The Little Free Library @ Macleod

Have you seen the Little Free Library that is shaped like a space rocket at the park opposite the Macleod shopping centre? Isabella in 6Z and Mia in 3JC at our school help to look after the library on behalf of the Macleod shopkeepers and they are doing a great job!

Front view

Back view

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Little Free Library is a box full of books where anyone can stop and pick up a book to read. When you finish reading the book you can return it for others to read or donate one of your own books. You don’t need to be a member or even need a library card!  The idea is to “Take a book, return a book”

Little Free Library Story from Beargrass Media on Vimeo.

The Little Free Libraries first began in Wisconsin in the USA in 2009 and there are now more than 25,000 Little Free Libraries around the world. The libraries can be in public spaces or in people’s front yards (You might like to put one in your family’s front yard!).  

Take a look at the Little Free Libraries website HERE and photos of Little Free Libraries HERE 

I wonder if we might be able to set up a Little Free Library at the front of our school…what do you think? Leave your suggestions or ideas in the comment section…