Great Day in the Library!

Oh, my.  This week has been a roller-coaster ride of feelings and emotions.  Yesterday, the specialists' team met with the principal.  It was tense.  Very tense.  You know the story: we feel devalued by the teachers, he doesn't know how else to help us...what a mess.  It was pretty ugly (although things were worked out today).

Today was Day 6, which meant it was the last day of the rotation.  The book we read in K-2 from our state award nominated list, I had already read 15 times.  Today was 16-17-18.  I thought that I had heard everything.  But today's classes had whole new insights, new ideas, and it totally lifted me past the fact that I had the book memorized already and was more than a little tired of reading it.

The kids were doing a small writing activity after the book, and I was walking around helping a first grade class with sounding out their words.  One little boy had finished his writing, and I read it out loud.  He looked at me with the biggest smile and said, "You can read that!?!?!" And I said yes.  He said, "I never did that before!!" (write something that others could read).  Oh, my gosh, how totally sweet was that?!?! He was just so excited that I read what he wrote!

Another little boy, who is a bit of a behavior problem, did an awesome job on his writing, and I told him how excited I was that he did such good work.  Then I told him to read it to my assistant, who was equally impressed.  I swear, that boy floated out of the library today.

It was a really good day in the library!!

Extra Yarn

I love this book! The kids all amaze me with their insights, and I've learned new interpretations of the book from them.

After reading the book, we've done this yarn-wrapping craft (since we can't knit).  I got some branches from a tree that had lost a limb recently, and the kids have been wrapping them with yarn all week.  They're almost finished!!

Here are some pictures of our work: