My Father's Dragon

Have you heard of Elmer Elevator?  I first heard about him about 15 years ago.  I'll confess the character name did not inspire me.  However, I was quickly reminded of the old adage "Don't judge a book by its cover." Or in this case by its main character name.

Turns out Elmer is a fantastically clever fellow with a very big heart who has a great adventure saving a baby dragon.  This 10 chapter book is the first in a trilogy and it's just plain old fun to read.  It lends itself to all types of fun activities. Like this torn paper version of the baby dragon.

You can easily integrate teaching map skills and landforms with this book.  One of the culminating activities we all loved had the students creating their own salt dough islands. Yes, it was messy and time consuming, but oh so fun! Kids love the opportunity to be creative and I will tell you that some of our islands were really quite impressive.

I supplied students with miscellaneous craft supplies (I always have odd bits of things left over from my many crafty experiments).  I also put a call out to my families to send in any leftover supplies they were willing to part with.  Each year we always ended up with a great assortment and the kids never ceased to amazing me with what they come up with.  As a part of the assessment students were required to include 3-5 landforms we covered in our study and label them. It was always fun to see what they chose to incorporate into their creations.

I can't say enough great things about this book and guess what?  It's now a part of the public domain.  Ruth Stiles Gannett wrote in in 1923! It's available for FREE along with the illustrations at gutenberg.org.   How great is that?   

I've got an entire unit of activities to go along with this classic story available on my TPT store be sure to check it out if you are interested in using this book with your class!

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Be sure to check out this My Father's Dragon Pinterest Board that includes some additional fun ideas that go nicely with the unit.

Only Half Crazy

No turning back.  I hit the submit button.  Just registered for my first half marathon. At the moment I am feeling like I can do this...I am just praying that is in fact true!  It's not till November so I've got some time to train and thankfully the awful heat and humidity I ran in this morning will be long gone by then!

One More Mile has tons of fun slogans on their running gear.  I sport my "Will Run For Margaritas" tank fairly often.  Not only is it true, it makes me smile every time I put it on.  I am thinking that this one will be on my Christmas list for next year.

 

I know I will chuckle when I put this one on also, but it isn't quite as true...pretty sure I am more than half crazy! Ask anyone....no don't!

Anyone else out there half crazy too?  Are you registered for any races this fall?  

Little Free Library

Do you have a Little Free Library in your town?  Have you even heard about the Little Free Library movement?  If not, you really need to check this out! The basic concept is simply stated as follows on the Little Free Library Website:

It’s a “take a book, return a book” gathering place where neighbors share their favorite literature and stories. In its most basic form, a Little Free Library is a box full of books where anyone may stop by and pick up a book (or two) and bring back another book to share. You can, too!

How awesome is that!  Well, it just so happens that I have two fantastically awesome friends who joined the movement, built and started Little Free Library #2002 back in October of 2012.  Look how cute it is!

Little Free Library #2002

Get this, they also hosted an open house and ribbon cutting to celebrate the opening of their new little library. They printed invitations and spent hours preparing lots of "little" food to share with all of their guests.  There were tiny ham & grilled cheese sandwiches, delicious miniature pork sliders and much more.  Even the condiments containers were nice and little. I just love finishing details like that.

Miniature grilled ham & cheese

We had a lovely time celebrating this wonderful new way of sharing books, making friends and building community.  It was a truly special day.  Before we held the official "Ribbon Cutting" we all got to enjoy a few more itty bitty treats.  The mini muffins and donuts were to die for yummy, but that's always the case with this couple.  I don't think they have ever made something that didn't taste scrumptious and just look how adorable everything was too!

Once the ribbon was cut each of us took turns peeking inside to see the treasures that had been placed inside.  Of course, we found a delightful assortment of things for folks of all ages and interests.  I happened to know that this Little Free Library has been well visited over the past 2 years and just this week it got a brand new solar light installed for visitors who stop by as the sun goes down.  This couple is truly a gift to their community in so many ways, I'll have to share more about them another time.  For now just know that they have given the gift of free books and made many new friends as a result.  What could be better?

Did you know there are Little Free Libraries all over the world? There are approximately 15,000 Little Free Libraries in 56 different countries! Check out this map to find one near you.
Map of all Little Free Libraries

Porch Time

Are you good at porch sitting? I need to get better at taking the time to slow down, recharge and just sit.  I have always loved the idea of a front porch.  The thought of sitting out with friends and watching kids and people go by has a special appeal. Maybe someday I'll have a house with a front porch.  Or I guess I could just park a camp chair on the driveway and see if that has the same effect....probably won't.

This porch is in Fredericksburg, Texas and I plan to make it back there someday. I could have used a few more days at this wonderful spot. For now I'll enjoy the memory of it and work on making sure my Sundays are well spent.

Meeting Nancy

What a fantastic morning! Well, not the 5:45am wake up, but that's another story.  What made this morning so great is that I got to meet Nancy Alvarez from Teaching With Nancy live and in person!

Back in January I linked up one of my TPT Freebies on Nancy's blog and she contacted me about featuring it in her Freebie Spotlight.  I was beyond thrilled and of course said, "Please do!"  In our e-mail exchange we discovered we both live in the same town! What a wonderful coincidence!

Nancy has been encouraging me in small ways ever since.  Knowing that I am new to blogging, branding, social media and developing PLN's (I didn't even know what a PLN was before Nancy) she has pointed me in the right direction multiple times.  We had talked about meeting in person, but we finally made it happen this morning.

We had breakfast and I asked her a million questions. So basically, I had breakfast and Nancy didn't get much time to take a bite... she was too busy sharing her wealth of knowledge.  I made mad scribbles in my notebook that include things like:

• Visual Storytelling
• Shortstack
• Screencast
• Branding
• Flubaroo
• Record MP3
• Google Educator.......and much, much more

It was a pleasure to meet her and I feel so lucky to have someone so close who is so willing to help and share her talents.  I did ask her if she ever sleeps, because I just don't quite know how she does it all!  I confess my head is spinning with all the new info.  Now I've got to find the time to dig and learn!

Passport to Global Citizenship for IB Students

Do you teach PYP in an International Baccalaureate school?  This little passport to global citizenship is designed to compliment teaching the IB Transdisciplinary Themes and to reinforce your Central Ideas and Lines of Inquiry, and it's just plain fun for kids!

This passport just got a a face lift and some updates that I think make even easier to use in your PYP classroom.

There are pages for students to make Global Connections and record Lines of Inquiry, as well as, some blank pages you can edit to meet your own classroom needs.   You might want to consider using these extra pages as a motivator for students to share ideas and global connections they have found or make on their own outside of the classroom.

There are two versions of this passport and both are editable! The updated version is a PowerPoint file allows for a bit more customization and already has text boxes for you to personalize this passport to match your IB units of study. You can pre-type your Central Ideas and Lines of Inquiry or you can print a blank version and have your students fill these in themselves.

You have several different printing options.  This passport includes Transdisciplinary Theme icon stamps that you can print and students can cut and glue them into their passports as you complete each unit.  Or you can have students illustrate their own icon stamp that symbolizes your particular central idea if you prefer.  There is also a version that allows you to pre-print with the icons already on the page.  It's totally up to you! 

Both versions of this product allow teachers to enter personalize data on the Global Citizen ID Page and even allows for adding a student picture electronically.  You can also add customized text to the included blank pages.

NOTE:  To add the picture to the PDF version you must have the most recent version of Adobe Reader (XI).

Click to Preview this Product at my TPT Store

For those of you who may have found your way to this post and aren't familiar IB schools.  IB stands for International Baccalaureate.  It is a world wide program founded in 1968.  The following is the IB Mission Statement:

The International Baccalaureate aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.

To this end the organization works with schools, governments and international organizations to develop challenging programmes of international education and rigorous assessment.

These programmes encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right.

To be honest I think this mission statement is true for most educators.  I am pretty sure that most of us who go into education desire to develop "inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect."