Valentine's Goodies

Our Book Fair wrapped up last week and it was a big success.  It was the most successful spring book fair we've ever had. I'm not sure what I did differently this time around.  Maybe it wasn't anything I did. Perhaps it's a sign that the economy is really turning around.

Something I've done at every spring book fair is Valentine Grams.  Parents and grandparents can purchase a book on the sly at the book fair, either by dropping by or by sending in their payment and book choice in a sealed envelope.  You can get a copy of the Valentine Gram letter I send home by clicking HERE.

Then I wrap up the book along with a goodie or two which usually includes a piece of candy, a pencil, and a bookmark.  Then on Valentine's Day, I deliver the Valentine Grams.  We had about 40 Valentine Grams this year.  I forgot to snap a picture of the Valentine Grams from this year, but you can see from the pictures above what they looked like in years past.

The bookmarks I put in the Valentine Grams come from my Valentine bookmark packs.

Click HERE to check out this pack of four FREE bookmarks.

Click HERE to check out this pack of 20 bookmarks.

The kids really love them.

Since I was delivering Valentines, it got me in a festive mood.  So I put on my Valentine Jamberry nailwraps.  I don't normally wear jams on all of my fingers because I am super hard on my nails, but these were really cute.

After a week, this is what they looked like.  There was a little wear on the tips, but overall, they still looked pretty good.  I think the foil backing helped.

The jams that are plastic don't wear quite as well on my fingers, as seen in the picture above. This was after a week of  lessons, no parent volunteers and lots of  reshelving of books.  Still, I like the look so I will probably keep wearing them, at least on a couple of nails at a time.  If you liked to check them out, click HERE to go to Jamberry's website.

To keep up the Valentine spirit, I did a fun "Blind Date" lesson with the fourth grade classes. I started off the lesson with a short 6 question quiz to help them discover their perfect genre. I found the quiz on Mrs. Reader Pants' blog.  You can get a copy of it HERE.  Then I book talked several different books in each of the genres and invited them to pick a book within their newly discovered "perfect match" genre.

To make it more interesting, I wrapped some books in bulletin board paper and labeled them with only the book's genre, reading level, and the barcode.  The only stipulations were that they couldn't unwrap the book until they got back to their classroom and they had to keep the book for at least one day.

 I called it a Blind Date.  I got the idea from THIS pin on Pinterest.  All but 2 students ended up being pleased with their choices.

I made some fun signs to decorate the shelves.  You can snag 'em HERE for free.

So that was my Valentine's Week.  How was your?