Thrifty Thursday: Children's Book on the Cheap!

I always encourage parents to treat their child's reading like they would their eating habits.  It's important to provide choices and variety.  But, many of our students are in an unincorporated portion of our city and do not have library cards.   Buying a variety of books is not always affordable, so I would love to share some tips on how to get books for your children for free or cheap today.  Let the book thriftiness begin!

1. Check out local resale.  Our local PTO holds a Children's clothing and toy resale twice a year, and there's one coming up on April 13, 2019 in Sycamore, IL from 8:00 am to 2:00pm, with most items listed half price from 1:00 pm -2:00 pm.  This is a fabulous place to buy children's books too!  Find more info on the sale here.  Sale regulars, know to bring a laundry basket to collect their find and for easy check out.
2. Little Free libraries!  Our town has little libraries all over.  As a parent, I loved to take my boys on bike rides to our town's little libraries and get exercise and reading!  Find your local little libraries here.  Then get your bikes, your helmets and back packs and head out with the kids!  Please remember, these are libraries and you should return the book or replace it with one of your own.
3. Thrift stores such as Salvation Army and Goodwill.  Our Local PTO will take all the items from our thrift sale over to the PTO after our sale, so if you cannot make a local PTO sale, visit your local thrift shop the next week for great finds you may have missed.

Check back later this month for more tips on finding children's books cheap!

Wizard Wednesday: Before or After Harry Potter

If you have children, sooner or later your child will probably bring home Harry Potter books.  I have students in every grade checking out Harry Potter.  So I am calling this post Wizard Wednesday and I am sharing wizard books for those too young and for the older child who has run out of HP books!  Here are some of my favorite Wizard books available at North Elementary's Library:

1st-3rd Grade
The Rise of the Earth Dragon (Book one of The Dragon Master's Series photo at top) by Tracey West Published by Scholastic.  This series is a Scholastic Branches book.  Branches books are written for the child who is ready to move up from easy books, and not quite ready for chapter books.  A five star rated book about an 8 year old boy named Drake who is snatched away to train with dragons at the kings castle.

3rd-5th Grades
Midnight for Charlie Bone (book one in the Charlie Bone Series, photo above) by Jenny Nimmo.  The story of Charlie Bone, who discovers his magic at 13 and his struggle to keep his evil family from misusing or taking his powers.

Magyk by Angie Sage (book one in the Septimus Heap Series photo above).  The story of a magical seventh son of a seventh son, stolen as a baby.  Another 4 1/2 star book.

The Hidden Stairs and the Magic Carpet (book one in the Secrets of Droon Series) by Tony Abbott.  A four and a half star book about a boy named Eric and his friends, who enter a new world through a staircase in his basement.

Try it Tuesday: Audio Book to Spark Reading

One of the strategies I have used to spark reading as a parent is to check out the same book as an audio book and a physical book.  Play the first disk or portion of an audio book for one night, then replace the audio book with the physical book for the next night.  You can also, let children listen to the first book of a series and then swap to the physical books in the rest of the series.  And finally, you can check out an audio book for a great author, and then check out other books by the same author, but not in the series as the audio book.  

Here are some books at our North Library you can check out in both formats:

The Secret Kingdom:  Book One in the Chronicles of the Red King by Jenny Nimmo
The Stones of Ravenglass:  Book Two in the Chronicles of the Red King by Jenny Nimmo
Charolette's Web by E. B. White
The Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems

Here are some audio books we have from authors we have in our library:
The Naughty Nork by Bruce Coville


Our North Library selection of audio books are very limited and your school library's selection maybe limited too, so here are some other options for finding audio books for free or cheap:

1. Visit your local library
2. Add the Amazon audio app to your phone or tablet.  You get one free audio book just for downloading the app.
3. Sign up for a free trail of Amazon's audio service.
4. Visit your libraries book sale and look for resale audio books.

APRIL is National School Library Month

Welcome to National School Library month!  For the last year and a half I have been the librarian para-professional at an elementary school in Sycamore, IL and I love my job!  

As a parent, I know how critical reading is to the success of our children, so being apart of that journey in other children's lives in an honor and a privileged.  I also feel a great responsibility being the grade school librarian.  Reading must be enjoyable for a child to become a reader.  And in our current society, their interests are being consumed by video games, smart phones, TV and more.  Along with this competition for reading time, many of our student body are not part of our local library system, and our grade school library is the ONLY library they know and use.  So, this month I am devoting my blog to posts to engage our school parents and students.

Our library is in the middle of a fund raising campaign for new shelving, tables and chairs and more.  The current shelving is sagging and some even broken (see photo below).  Our new vision includes mobile shelves that can be rolled to the side for events and speaker visits (see photos at the top of the screen).  We also hope to update our technology, and create a Maker Space.  Find out more about this fundraising campaign and donate here.

Help me celebrate National School library month, and share the love of reading with our community!  We must treat reading like other priorities in our children's lives, make sure they under stand the value of reading, provide them with variety and abundant good reading choices, make reading part of their daily routines, and keep it fun!  Even if you're not part of our community, you will enjoy great tips about raising a reader and engaging your child's love of reading.  So, check back daily and see what's going on as part of our celebration!

A Valentine's Day Baby Card

A co worker had a baby on Valentine's day and I needed a card.  I am currently obsessing over easel cards, so I pulled out the Cricut DS and Anna Griffin paper and made a card.  I am going to share this for the Bitten by the Bug 2 Valentine's Hearts challenge because he was born on Valentine's day!

You can find the Cricut DS file if you like here.  You will need Reminisce Accents, New Arrivals, Anna's Lace Cards, Close to my Heart Flower Market, and Lacy Labels and a printer.  You will need a scoring wheel or just remove the dashed line in the card base.

To assemble the card, fold the top portion of the card base in half across the top, along the scored line, matching right side of the paper to right side of the paper.  Add stork layer and light blue layer on top of dark blue layer.  Add to the green circle and glue the top half of the green circle to the top of the card base, matching wrong side of the card base to the wrong side of the green circle.

A Custom Gift Box with Anna Griffin

Every year we have a Secret Santa gift exchange at work.  Our exchange covers three work days and a final gift at the staff party.  The three day gifts are small items, and I needed a special box for K-Cups.  I found a beautiful box in Design Space by Anna Griffin.  The sample is in gold, but I am obsessed with silver!

I am entering this in the Fantabulous Cricut Challenge blogs, Challenge 341 Christmas.  The cartridge used is Anna's Holiday Home Decor.  I used Anna's Silver Glitter paper and LOVE how it cuts in my Cricut!  Using 12 x 12 paper and the default box size, this box will fit 3 K-cups.

Three Ways to Make Reading Part of Your Family's Holidays

As I unpacked the holiday decor this year, I ran across some of my family's holiday books and it inspired me to share with you some ways to make reading part of your family's holiday traditions.

1. Read aloud count down-Growing up my father would start reading "A Christmas Carol" sometime around Thanksgiving and finishing by Christmas eve.  It became such a favorite that most of  us, were able to quote the opening paragraph.  You can see our well loved copy taped together above.
   
2. Make the old new-My mother-in-law found this advent calendar and bought it for my boys when they were young.  I loved having a new way to share my family tradition with the boys and my young sons were obsessed with this every year.  We enjoyed a portion of the story every night just as I did with an interactive book they could take out and hold and then put a way.  
   
3. Start a new tradition and have your own Jolabokaflod!  Give everyone a new book on Christmas eve to read.  My children nag every Christmas eve to open just one item under the tree.  This year, they will each be allowed to open a book to read before bed. When my boys were young, I started a tradition of only giving my boys three gifts (as baby Jesus got three) and there was always something from Santa.  Now I can keep the presents to a minimum and still share a love for reading!

By making reading part of your families holiday tradition, you show the value of reading and make it part of their fond holiday memories.  It's also a wonderful way to bond and de-stress during the craziness of the holidays!  Remember, "Children are made readers on the laps of their parents."  Emilie Buchwold.