Uncategorized

My Grandpa is a dinosaur

By Terry Jones

Illustrated by Richard Fairgray

Wow! There are dinosaurs all over the library. We have a great competition at school this week. All you have to do is draw a picture of a dinosaur and you might win a copy of this wonderful book. Any kind of dinosaur – even one you invent yourself. If you come in to the library you can see what some students have created already. There are rainbow dinosaurs and even one with a volcano head.

Bring your pictures to the library before next Wednesday.

Next week is Samoan language week.  Ursla and Henrietta have made a wonderful display in the library to help celebrate the special week.

If you want to learn a few words in Samoan then check out the link here.

Did you know we even have a copy of The very hungry caterpillar written all in Samoan. It is called O le ketapila matua fia ai.

It is on display in the library with a few other Samoan books for you to look at. Thank you Ursla and Henrietta for all your help.

What an awesome day! As part of our week long celebration of books and reading, children dressed up as their favourite book characters and marched around the tennis courts displaying their costumes and their love of books. Even our wonderful caretaker Mr Walker took time to put on the great big and very heavy costume of Clifford the dog. Poor Mr Walker was very, very hot underneath all that gear. So thank you Mr Walker for brightening up the day of all our children and even the drivers driving along our road this morning.

         Thanks also to Mrs Williams for helping him with the crossing this morning.

Yesterday the junior and middle teams had a wonderful afternoon being entertained by Zac McCallum from Christchurch City Libraries.

Here he is reading Piranhas don’t eat bananas by the author Arron Blabey.

Thanks Zac or as the children said thanks “banana man”.

We have this book in our library so you can read it for yourselves later.

Next week will be full-on with lots of focus on books and reading. There are heaps of competitions to enter.

Rose has already created her story diorama for one of the competitions and it is gorgeous. I can see that you have taken so much time with this Rose and I love the use of twigs for the houses.

Lots of fantastic new books to buy too. This will be a great chance to stock up on some new titles for the long winter nights ahead. Don’t forget the parade on Thursday at 9.15. Take 5 will be open too if you feel like a cup of coffee or a hot chocolate.

Book Week is in week two of term two – 9th – 13th May.

So many exciting things to do. Competitions, teacher read-around, character dress-up and parade, and of course heaps of new books for sale. It is a fantastic week of thinking about books, reading books and sharing stories.

Start thinking now about which book character you might want to dress up as so you are already for when it happens next term. Check out the competitions below and perhaps do some over the holidays. Creating book trailers seem to be a favourite one to try at the moment but there a plenty to choose from.

Book Trailer      Create a book trailer for your favourite book.

Fractured Fairy Tale  Write a different ending to a well known story. No more than 100 words.

50 word story   Write a story which takes place in a fantasy world. You may only use 50 words or less.

Dust Cover      Design a Book cover for a fantasy book.

Altered tins  Design a mini fantasy diorama based on a book character or scene within a tin or small cardboard box.   The smaller the better. A few examples pictured below. Check them out in the library.

Shelfie  Take a photo in front of your bookshelf. It is up to you to decide how the Fantasy theme is represented in your shelfie.

There will be a few more competitions in the library so do come in.

Book week happens every two years so this is your chance to really have some fun and support our library. It is a good chance to stock up on some new books and put them away for winter. Hope to see you there.

Before classes began today I had a few visitors eager to find something to read. These boys had made a mountain out of the beanbags and were enjoying a shared session on the library iPad.

They were so engrossed in what they were doing they almost missed the bell and I had to remind them to go off to class.

I am always amazed at our children here at school. You just never know what is going to happen next. A simple library lesson on parts of a book turned into conversations about what we can do that is special.

Toby you are amazing. I don’t know how you can do what you are doing but we all loved watching as you so quickly turned yourself into a little ball with your own feet as your reading pillow. You blew us all away.