Sophie's Squash "friends"

Recenty our kindergarten, first grade, and second grade classes read Sophie's Squash by Pat Zietlow Miller, a wonderful story about a girl who chooses a squash at the farmer's market and finds that it is "just the right size to love."  Sophie uses markers to give her squash a face, names it Bernice, and then takes her new friend everywhere with her that fall.

As part of the lesson after reading the book, students used iPads and the Doodle Buddy app (and a couple of real squash -- butternut and pumpkin -- from our farmer's market) to create their own squash "friends."  Here are some of their creations:

Are you ready for summer?

Jones, D.. summerclouds.jpg. July 28, 2002. Pics4Learning. 28 May 2014 <http://pics.tech4learning.com>

Here at Stough, it seems that everyone is ready for a nice, warm summer.   In the library, I'm thinking a lot about summer reading.   Over the last two weeks, I have shared some great summer reading opportunities with my classes.   I urged them to visit our wonderful Wake County Public Libraries to join in on their summer reading program.   I let them know how they can visit Barnes & Noble stores to earn a free book.   I showed them how they can log in to the Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge to record their reading minutes, take part in weekly challenges and learn about great books and authors.

I am happy to find that I am not the only one thinking about summer reading.  I read this blog post from Imagination Soup with some of these same activities and even more.  What great ideas she has! I especially like the downloadable summer reading calendars and the summer genre challenge. I hope that you will click over to the Imagination Soup blog to find some ways to make reading even more exciting for your family this summer!