Well, the people from Google have the entries in the Doodle 4 Goole contest narrowed down to the finalists. Now, it’s your turn to select your favorites. This would be a great sponge activity to do as a class. I hope you enjoy seeing the results. The winner will appear on the Google website on May 21st, so cast your votes now! Voting ends on May 18th. You can cast your votes at http://www.google.com/doodle4google/vote.html.

I hope you all enjoyed our author visit from Carolyn Crimi as much as I did. I heard lots of positive, excited responses from the kids, and Carolyn had so many wonderful things to say about our school.

As you are trying to fill the last days of school with meaningful activities, it might be fun to incorporate some of Mrs. Crimi’s writing tips for the kids. Here are a couple of ideas:

• Have the students write a “calendar story”
  Encourage the students to bring in a calendar from home that has interesting pictures (especially ones that have pictures showing “trouble”) and select one of the pictures as the theme for the story. If finding calendars doesn’t work, you as the teacher could go online to Flickr and find some interesting pictures to use as story prompts (don’t send kids to search for pictures online). I have an example of using some Flickr images as prompts on a Voicethread project I use with my eMINTS teachers. This will show you some of the interesting photos you can find online that make great writing prompts.
• Create a story idea treasure chest
  Have the students go on a story idea treasure hunt around the school (or you could have them do it at home) and collect interesting objects that they could use as writing ideas. They could bring in shoeboxes and decorate them and add the objects to their box. Of course, have them select one of the objects to use to write a story.

Again, I hope you enjoyed our author visit and found it beneficial to the kids. I hope to continue bringing in an author each year. Sell that Cookie Dough and bring in Community Cash!

Your Library Lady,

Cindy