Sweet on Bookmarks

Valentine's Day is just around the corner, which means it's time for some sweet bookmarks!

You can get a set of 4 free Valentine bookmarks HERE.  2 are color and 2 are black and white for your kiddos to color.

And I also have a set of 20 for $2.00. This set included 12 color and 8 black and white for your friends to color. You can get them HERE. 

I am using these fun bookmarks in my Valentine Grams that I sell at the Book Fair this week.  You can get a copy of the form here.

Hope you enjoy and Happy Valentine's Day!

Book Fair Fiesta

The Book Fair has arrived and with a bit of effort, it has been set up and is ready for the first shoppers.

I was very lucky to have gotten the Book Fair delivered before the bad weather hit my area.  A couple of other Media Specialists who were scheduled to have their Book Fair delivered on the same day just missed their delivery by a few hours because the roads were getting too slick for the truck to get through.

While this saved me some stress of having to reschedule, I still had to make plans to get to my school and get set up, all while everyone was supposed to be on a snow day because the roads were still very slick. Luckily I was able to make it to my school safely and get things set up in about 6 hours.

I even had help from a teacher at my school who also braved the roads to check on her class pets.

This is my seventh Book Fair, so I have things pretty well down pat by now, learning what to do and what not to do from past Book Fairs.

Like:

1) Schedule the Book Fair from Friday to Friday to ensure that it will be delivered in time to do a Preview Day the Friday before.  (Thanks to Mrs. ReaderPants for this tip, and many others.  You can read her tips here.)

2)  Attend a Book Fair workshop.  You not only get some great ideas for your Book Fair, but you also earn 25 Scholastic dollars.

3)  Do as much as you can before-hand.  Make copies of Book Fair letters, print posters and make decorations....whatever you can do ahead of time, do it.

4)  Recruit volunteers.  You can do it on your own, but it is so much easier with help, especially when it comes to decorating, setting up, and taking down the fair.

5)  Thank volunteers. If you want them to come back, be sure to thank your volunteers in some way...like $5 in free books from the Book Fair or some other small thank you gift.  Showing your appreciation is not only the polite and right thing to do, but it will ensure that you have ready volunteers in the future.

6)  Plan some type of family event.  We do a family event at night so that parents who can't come during the day can visit/shop.  We are planning a STEM night for this Book Fair.  We did the same kind of thing in November and it was a big hit.  The kids loved having something to take home with them and parents were in a good mood to shop afterwards because their kids were happy.  It's a win-win!

7)  Promote!  Promote!  Promote!  Hang posters a few weeks before. Talk it up to your classes that come through the Media Center to build up excitement.  Make announcements in the morning.  You could even have students do some type of skit if you have video announcements.  Send home notes. I even do a calling post that goes out to all the families in our school telling about the Book Fair and the family event.  It really does make a difference.

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8)  Purchase the Book Fair thematic decorating kit.  It is worth your sanity to spend the $49.95.  Plus it would cost much more to buy those items at a party store, not to mention the time it would take to track down those items.

9)  Hang up the poster string (if you display posters that way) before setting anything up.  It is much easier to get the ladder where you need it to be when Book Fair shelves are not in the way.

10) Put smaller items and books that come with other items up front to make it easy to keep an eye on those items that might otherwise "disappear."

11)  If your school is an AR school, label books with AR levels and points the day before your preview.  This helps students and parents find appropriate books and might save you some time during the fair of having to look it up.  You can do this using AR BookFinder or the new Scholastic Book Fair app.  It is available both on iTunes and Google Play for Android devices.  I did find that the Book Fair app didn't always work.   That might be an issue that can be fixed with an update.  It is a pretty cool app when it works and shoppers can download the app, too, for their use.

12)  Get plenty of rest before the Book Fair starts.  You will need it!

The theme for this Book Fair is Book Fair Fiesa.

When I taught first grade...years ago...we had a unit on Mexico, so I pulled out some of my ideas from that unit for decorations and made the doors look like pinatas.

Here's the classroom wishlist board.

And here's the "Doodad" board. Thanks to Jennifer Underhill of the Three Ring Library blog for this idea.  I've used it for 4 Book Fairs now and it has been so helpful.

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The spring Book Fair decorating kit (2014) comes with a serape and a double side photo prop.  I found a free app called BoothStache to take pictures of students with fun mustaches behind the photo prop or they could wear the serape.  How fun is that?

I will also be doing Valentine Grams again this year.  This is an idea that has been used by many Media Specialists in my county. You can get a copy of the form here.  Parents and grandparents buy a book from the Book Fair on the sly and fill out a special note to go with the book.  I wrap it up and deliver it with a special treat on Valentine's Day.  So fun!

I love Book Fair week, especially how it makes the Media Center smell.  Ahhh!  Someone should bottle that smell and sell it as air freshener.  Anyway, that's how our Book Fair fiesta is going down.

Do you have any Book Fair tips to share?

Colds, Laryngitis, and Snow

Surprise!  I have not disappeared from the face of the earth, although I might have liked to a few times in the last few weeks.  It has been one hurdle after another it seems.

First I got one bugger of a cold which knocked me out for about 5 days.  I went back to work for 2 days and then lost my voice and about fainted halfway through the day. 

I stayed home for another 1 1/2 days to recuperate; came back to school for a day and then it snowed/iced us out for another 4 days.  I live about 45 minutes southwest of Atlanta, so you may have heard about the awful weather we had near that area and the traffic mess it caused. While it wasn't nearly as bad where I lived as far as traffic goes, the roads were very icy and we were basically stuck inside until Saturday when temps got up to 60 and melted most of it.  

And while I probably should have been catching up on messed up lesson plans and long over due blog posts, I took advantage of those days to rest. I don't want to relapse because I have to use my sick days sparingly for the rest of the year.  So I hope you will forgive my absence from The Book Bug.

I have some great blog posts planned out for the next few weeks, so if you can bare with me for a few more days, there should be some great reading coming your way.

As always, thanks for being a loyal follower.

Winner! Winner! Chicken Dinner!

Well...not really a chicken dinner, but a free app download.  =)

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Thanks for all of your comments on the "Appy New Year" post.  I used the random.org to select the winner of the free download of Animoby.

And the winner is....

Congratulations, Kelli!  Send me an email at jnase1@gmail.com and I will give you the details of how to get your download of Animoby for free.

Stay tuned. There may be more app reviews and giveaways in the future.

Kids Are Flipping for Flipgrid

So I tested out my question in flipgrid with some of the students who came through the Media Center on Friday and they really enjoyed it.

Here is a link to our updated flipgrid.  You might notice that the background colors have changed.  I found out that you can customize the grids that way. Pretty neat!  You can read more about this app on my "Appy New Year" post.

Have you tried out the other cool app, Animoby, I blogged about in my "Appy New Year" post?  You can read all about it here.

And don't forget, you have a chance to win a free download of the AniMoby app (a $7.99 value) by commenting on the "Appy New Year" post by tomorrow, January 14.  You can get to that post by clicking here.   The winner(s) will be announced on January 15.

What other cool apps are you wild about in your Media Center or Library?

New Year's Bookmarks and Book Care

You would think with two unexpected snow days at the beginning of this week that I would have gotten this post up earlier, but, alas, it did not happen.  But maybe you can still use these fun bookmarks.

I made two sets.  The first is a set of 4 free bookmarks which includes 2 color and 2 black and white bookmarks for your students to color.  You can get them HERE in my Teacher's Dojo store.

The second is a set of 24 bookmarks which includes 12 color and 12 black and white bookmarks for your students to color.  These are available HERE in my Teacher's Dojo store for $3.00.

For lessons this week, I decided to review book care with the kinders and firsties.

  

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We read the book Never Let a Ghost Borrow Your Library Book by Karen Casale.

And then completed a little review sheet of how to take care of your library books.  You can get a copy of it free HERE.  I've also put  a link to this doc on my freebies page.

Next week I plan to do this lesson with the classes I missed this week so that I can get all caught up.  Then I have to start planning 100th Day centers.  The former first grade teacher in me gets very excited about the 100th Day of School.  =)

How is your new year going?

Appy New Year!

I hope you all had a great holiday and are ready to start the new year with your kiddos. It's my first day back to work and honestly, I would love to have a few more days off, but I do love my job.  So that makes it easier to get back in the groove.  I have  few items that might help make the new year easier for you, too.

First up is a fun little app I discovered about a month ago and since have seen several postings on others' blogs about it, so I though I would play around with it myself.  The app is called flipgrid.

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Flipgrid, just like it states in the picture above, is unique.  It allows you to post a question and have students answer it with a short (90 seconds or less) video clip. I am trying out the demo version which is free for 21 days. If I decide to purchase it is $65/year.  This includes unlimited questions per grid and unlimited responses per questions.

The demo version allows me to create up to 10 grids, which are basically classes and then I can pose questions in each of those grids.  

It is very easy to create the questions and the on-screen directions tell you step by step what to do. Once you've created your question, you can share the link to it with your students. All they have to do is press the + sign to create their video answer.

One downside is that students have to have an email address in order to post their response.  If you are using this in your library or classroom, you could always use your email address, if you are comfortable with that.

Once an answer has been posted to the question, you will see a picture of the person who answered the question.  You can set the question to be private so that only those with the password can view and/or post answers.  This is helpful for privacy reasons.

Anyone who has access to the question can view other's answers and like them by clicking on the little heart button.  Your picture that you set up when you answer the question shows up first.  Please ignore my rough appearance.  It was late when I made this flipgrid.  =)

What I like about this app is that it is a different way to assess learning, one that doesn't involve pencil and paper. And one answer can lead to another question. I am going to try it out with some of my students to see if it is worth the investment.  The question I am posing is "How will you take care of your library books in the new year?"  If you'd like to take part in the discussion, you can access it here.  You do need to download the flipgrid app, first.  But the app is free.  I am excited to see what kind of responses I get.  =)

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I was contacted a while back about reviewing an app called AnimMoby.  I admit, it took me a while to get around to checking it out, but I am finding it promising. For full disclosure purpose, I will tell you that I was given a promo code to try out this app in exchange for my honest review.  However, paid for the app outright and did not use the promo code.

My first impression of the app was very positive.  The navigation is very easy to understand.  This is a screen shot of the first page.

Creating a project is very simple as well.  It is similar to PowerPoint, but in some ways is much simpler to use than PowerPoint.  I think even kindergarten and first graders could master using this app.  I was told that you could convert PowerPoints from the computer to the iPad, but I didn't see a way to do that.  I will have to play around with it a bit more and maybe I can figure it out.  The final projects can be saved and viewed like PowerPoint or as PDF.

There are tons of images that you can use to create your project which you can access by clicking on the picture icon or by using the grid icon in the top left hand corner.  The images can be made larger or smaller by "pinching" the screen.  The pro version ($7.99) comes with 16 sets of images, but more sets can be purchased for .99 each.  I have found that the images it comes with was enough for my needs. There is also a free version of this app which comes with fewer images.

Another great feature is that you can import pictures from your device.  You can also crop them to the size you like.  This is a nice feature that older students may like to use to be able to customize projects.

Adding text is pretty simple as well.  Just click on the text icon (the large "A") and a red box pops up which you can then make larger or smaller by "pinching" the box.  You can also move it around to where you want it on the screen.  You can increase the font size and set it to be right, left, center, or justify alignment.  One downside is that you don't get a choice of fonts, but the font that is available is easy to read.  You can also write on the screen and you can choose the color of pencil to use.  Highlight is also an option.

You can record your voice and even your actions of making each slide by clicking the red circle at the bottom of the screen.  When you are finished, you can publish to the Animoby app, email your creation, or share it on facebook.  It is also saved on the Animoby website.

From the website, there are buttons that allow you to share your creation even more ways (Twitter, Google, and embed with a code, although when I embeded it, the screen was too wide for my blog). Here is the quick Animoby I created.  Please excuse my strong southern accent.   As much as I've tried to lose it, it has only gotten more pronounced since moving to Georgia.  =)

A neat feature about Animoby is that you can search through the app to find different projects.  I did a search for "Book Care" and the project I created showed up.  I also like that viewers can "like" a project.

I can see this as a great way of sharing book reviews or maybe even how projects.  Let the students make an Animoby project about how to choose a book using the 5 finger rule or how to check out a book.  These might be good for those students who are more visual and kinesthetic learners to create a book talk.

If you'd like to get a free download of Animoby Pro (a $7.99) value, just leave a comment below by January 14.  I will do a random pick from all the commenters. I will  announce the winner on January 15.  

The giveaway is now closed.  Click here to see who won.

Appy New Year, everyone!