Amberly Media Center

…a new book!

Can you guess what the Pigeon wants next? Here’s a contest where you can draw your own picture of what the Pigeon wants.

If your picture is selected, Mo Willems will come visit Amberly! Click here for details.

Kindergarten/First Grade:

• Watt. Scaredy Squirrel.
• Watt. Scaredy Squirrel Makes a Friend.

Second Grade:

• McDonald. Stinky and the World’s Worst Super-Stinky Sneakers. 

With conferences and Thanksgiving, we’ll be doing something fun: online “refrigerator magnet” poetry. You can try this at home at  http://www.magneticpoetry.com/kidspoetry/playonline.cfm

For some students, not having every word they want available to use is frustrating. Others enjoy the creative freedom of just trying out the words that appear before them in unusual ways. I will post some of the results here later.

 In addition to having fun, this will be an opportunity to cover some of the techniques needed to navigate web sites.

Do you love puzzles? Winston Breen can’t live without them and he finds them in everything from the patterns on wrapping paper to the sausage on a pizza pie. Winston loves puzzles for their own sake, but then he and his sister discover four mysterious pieces of wood that are part of a larger puzzle that may hold the key to a million dollar treasure.

You can play along (answers are in the back of the book) or you can just enjoy the mystery. 

Other puzzle books:

• Chasing Vermeer (F Bal)
• Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School (PB Sa)
• Walter Wick’s Eye Spy books (793.73 Wi)
• Westing Game (F Ra)
• Where’s Waldo? books (E Ha)

Kindergarten

• Friend. The Perfect Nest.
• Kasza. The Wolf’s Stew.
• Pilkey. The Night Before Thanksgiving.

First Grade (some new chapter book friends…)

• Cazet. Minnie and Moo Go Dancing.
• Chaconas. Cork & Fuzz: Good Sports.(and an old friend….)
• Pilkey. The Night Before Thanksgiving.

Second Grade

• Park. Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus.

Kindergarten

• Pilkey. When Cats Dream.
• Schachner. Skippyjon Jones.

First Grade

• Broach. When Dinosaurs Came with Everything.
• Wheeler. Dino-Hockey.

Second Grade

• Park. Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus.

Third Grade

• Chen. Little Eagle.
• Keller. Do Unto Otters.

The second graders know the secret: any book can be found if you know how to look it up on the computer with InfoCentre. Pairs of students began searching for subjects and then finding the books in the nonfiction section by call number last week. This week the students will continue by searching for authors and then finding the books in the fiction section alphabetically.

Although the systems are different, this is a skill you can help teach whenever you go to the Portage Public Library. Later in the year the second graders will try using the Public Library system online and compare it to the system used in the schools.

Kindergarten/First Grade

• DiCamillo. Mercy Watson: Princess in Disguise.
• Fleming. Pumpkin Eye.
• Shaw. Sheep Trick or Treat.

Second Grade

• Silverman. Big Pumpkin.
• Yolen. Commander Toad and the Dis-Asteroid.