Stories from the Library: October 12-16

This week, 3rd Graders bravely tackled a lesson in allusions using Margie Palatini's fun book Piggie Pie. I introduced allusions (a literary tactic in which a writer uses characters or moments from a well-known story to enhance his or her own story) and challenged the class to become "Allusion Detectives" as we read through Piggie Pie, a story about Gritch the Witch, a comical witch who tries to satisfy her craving for Piggie Pie. 3rd Graders rose to the challenge and loved pointing out how the author used Old MacDonald's farm, the Big Bad Wolf and visual allusions from The Wizard of Oz. I gave out badges reading "I'm an Allusion Detective" to our very clever 3rd Grade class.

Junior Kindergarten: Junior Kindergarteners listened to Pumpkin Soup, written and illustrated by Helen Cooper, a lively tale about friendship, sharing and delicious soup. The Junior Kindergarteners had fun remembering what kinds of soup they've eaten before and were intrigued by the pumpkin soup recipe at the end of the book.


Kindergarten: In honor of the Kindergarten's field trip to the pumpkin patch on Thursday, we read Arthur's Field Trip by Leslie Tryon. In this picture book, Arthur the goose's class takes a field trip to the apple farm, where they get to pick apples, press apple cider, sample apple pie and learn about apples.


1st Grade: Continuing in our unit on fables, 1st Graders read an adaptation of the Indian fable, the Blind Man and the Elephant called Seven Blind Mice by Ed Young. The moral, "Knowing in part may make a fine tale, but wisdom comes from seeing the whole" led into a good discussion about how we look at people-- do we judge people by just knowing a little bit about them or do we wait until we know the whole person to make a judgement?


2nd Grade: We learned more about how fiction and nonfiction books are arranged on the shelf, and 2nd Graders became experts in identifying fiction and nonfiction spine labels. 


3rd Grade: See opening post.



4th Grade: 4th Graders heard about Oregon Battle of the Books this week. Team sign-ups start now in the library!      


5th Grade: We started a unit on Edgar Allan Poe, the father of the modern horror story, in 5th Grade this week. I presented a PowerPoint about Poe's life and highlighted some of his famous stories. The 5th Graders decided we wanted to read "The Masque of Red Death" and "The Tell-Tale Heart" as a class and many of them were excited to check out Poe's book and read his works for themselves.