Hey Kids, Look at This!

We had a great afternoon with Jerry Pallotta. He did two shows (his word) for the kids and signed books for almost three hours. We were set up in the activity room and he brought kids on stage and made them laugh. He had control of that very large room the whole time, and he even managed to include a little bit of teaching and learning in his talks. During his signing time, he was making deals with a couple of boys trading sports cards. It's something they'll never forget, I'm sure.

When I was introducing Jerry to the little kids, I caught the face of one of the boys who mouthed the words "Jerrrrryyyy Palllllottttaaa" with me as I said it. It looked like he was so excited--like he was meeting a rock star. So cute. One of our kindergarten classes had been brainstorming ideas about the visit and decided that they should dress up to meet Jerry Pallotta. They were all in nice dresses and the boys wore ties. He took pictures with that class after the show and another picture with just the boys and their ties. Again, so cute.

My library intern brought his fancy camera along, so I'll post some photos as soon as I get them.

Family Math Night

Even though I wasn't terribly excited about Be Excited About Math Day last week, I definitely got excited about Math Night this week. Well, I was excited at how awesomely our math specialist incorporated our upcoming author visit into her program. Author Jerry Pallotta will be at our school this Friday, and he has written many counting books and math concept books. The math specialist had a table of his books (with order forms for signed copies) and little counting, addition, or subtraction books that the kids could make on their own. There were flashy stickers there and glitter markers and stamps and stamp pads. The kids had such a great time!

I even made a special vest for the occasion. I bought some fancy number fabric from my favorite online store and whipped up a vest (lined and everything!) on Sunday. Here was the super-cool fabric:

BEAM Day! (not)

Aren't you excited? Aren't you excited about Be Excited About Math Day? I am not. Let me tell you why. Be Excited About Math Day is being held in the Library.

If this were a school-wide event for students, I would Be Excited. Really, I love math! But this is a stupid district-implemented PR event for parents who are NOT Excited About Math.

We're going to show un-Excited parents how Exciting Math can Be! We're going to stage (oh, yes, I said stage) a Math lesson in the library so parents can watch. We're going to prepare a class to Be Excited about having parents watch them in the library learning Math.

Meanwhile, my classes and I are banished to the classrooms for the day. I am NOT Excited.

Christmas in February

I've had a Christmas cactus in the library since the first holiday after we moved in, 2005. It had blooms on it that year and none at all since then. This month, it has started blooming and it looks fabulous!! We gently refer to it as developmentally delayed. I am just happy that it is flowering at all. People think I have a green thumb because there are lots of plants in the library, and every so often a new one appears on a bookshelf tucked in among the natives. When people ask, I tell them that the plants thrive on neglect; if I started paying attention to them, they'd probably die. That's not totally true, but pretty close.