Look out for the first post of the school year 2017-18 and a brand new blog page here!
...going through my summer journal... special times with special people and special books... Welcome School Year 2017-18! Unpacking boxes with new books is always one of the first tasks at the beginning of a new school year. And I am loving it... and can't wait to share these wonderful new books with you! See you soon!
Look out for the first post of the school year 2017-18 and a brand new blog page here!
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Here are a few picture books you might enjoy reading as the summer comes to an end and you are preparing to return to school:
Or go to some of your all-time favorites – here are some of mine, what are yours? The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (William Joyce) A Child of Books (Oliver Jeffers) Last Stop on Market Street (Matt de la Pena) Zen Shorts (Jon Muth) Love As Strong As Ginger (Lenore Look) Fly, Eagle, Fly! (Christopher Gregorowski) Ms. Alison and I are looking forward to seeing you next week. Enjoy your last week off!
And here are, as always, a few books you might enjoy reading in connection with the theme of inquiring.
Have a great week!
Having lots of time to share a meal with family and friends is something else I treasure during the summer, even more so when the meal was prepared together. I love being in the kitchen with my family, chatting while we are cooking. I encourage you to explore cookbooks/cooking websites (for example Kids Cooking Activities), choose and plan for a particular recipe, buy the ingredients and cook together to enjoy a very special meal. You might even consider inviting relatives and/or friends to join you. Make sure to choose a special place to enjoy your meal as well. Here are a few special reading suggestions connected to cooking and food:
A few food-themed picture books Make an Apple Pie and Travel the World (Marjorie Priceman) Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (Judi Barrett) Cora Cooks Pancit (Dorina K. Lao Gilmore) The Boy Who Wanted to Cook (Gloria Whelan) Everybody Loves Dim Sum; The Ugly Vegetables (Grace Lin) Boy Dumpling; The Runaway Wok (Ying Chang Compestine) A few food-themed chapter books Recipe for Adventure series (Giada De Laurentiis) Granny Torelli Cooks Soup (Sharon Creech) Phoebe G. Green: A Passport to Pastries (Veera Hiranandani) Pie (Sarah Weeks) The Candymakers (Wendy Mass) Have a wonderful week! Are you ready for another week of Summer Reading Fun? Here we go :) We have inquired about many authors this year across the Primary school grades and I noticed that our students’ questions and wonderings are often connected to the actual writing process. In our Skype visit with Rob Buyea, the author commended our fifth graders for the many great questions about writing, for wanting to learn more about it from a published author. But also our youngest students are already enthusiastic bookmakers. So, student writers, share some of your writing and book making expertise with your parents this week. Some writing activities and prompts you might enjoy:
Here are some title suggestions of books around writing you might enjoy reading and get inspired by:
Picture books I Am A Story (Dan Yaccarino) Also an Octopus (Maggie Tokuda-Hall) Little Red Writing (Jean Holub) Ralph Tells a Story (Abby Hanlon) How This Book Was Made (Mac Barnett) Chapter books and novels for the middle grades Words With Wings (Nikki Grimes) Dear Mr. Henshaw (Beverly Cleary) Tofu Quilt (Ching Yeung Russell) Love That Dog and Hate That Cat (Sharon Creech) Brown Girl Dreaming (Jacqueline Woodson) Picture book biographies about authors John Ronald’s Dragons: The Story of J.R.R. Tolkien (Caroline McAlister) Some Writer: The Story of E.B. White (Melissa Sweet) Beatrix Potter and her Paint Box (David MacPhail) Enormous Smallness: A Story of E.E. Cummings (Matthew Burgess) Louisa May’s Battle: How the Civil War Led to Little Women (Kathleen Krull) Have a great week! Apologies for the delay in updating the blog this week. I had trouble logging into my Weebly account. Fortunately, the wonderful Weebly team just fixed the issue and here I am again :) When I was a child, art classes worried me. I always thought that I could not draw and consequently would never be good at art. I wish I had known then what I know now; there is so much more to art than drawing, there are so many different ways to be creative, using all kinds of media, from colored pencils to recycled materials; there is a way for everyone to be creative, express ideas and have fun at the same time. Be creative and have fun with whatever materials you have available where you are right now and enjoy experimenting. Here are some ideas of what you might enjoy doing:
How is the summer going for you? I hope you are all having a good time! I know that many of you travel during the break, a wonderful opportunity to discover new places, meet new people and/or catch up with family and friends. Here are some activities you might enjoy doing during your travels this summer:
Here are some title suggestions of books around traveling and exploring:
A few picture books about traveling The Airport Book (Lisa Brown) Are We There Yet? (Dan Santat) Journey (Aaron Becker) Oh the Places You’ll Go! (Dr. Seuss) Once There Was a Boy (Oliver Jeffers) A few chapter books and middle grade novels about journeys The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (Kate DiCamillo) Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (Grace Lin) Journey to the River Sea (Eva Ibbotson) Kensuke’s Kingdom (Michael Morpurgo) The Magic Tree House series (Mary Pope Osborne) A few nonfiction books around travelling and exploring Hello World! A Celebration of Languages and Curiosities (Jonathan Litton) The Quest for Z: The True Story of Explorer Percy Fawcett and a Lost City in the Amazon (Greg Pizzoli) Shackleton’s Journey (William Grill) The Uncommon Traveler: Mary Kingsley in Africa (Don Brown) A Voyage in the Clouds (Matthew Olshan) ‘This is the World’ series (Miroslav Sasek) Leap & Hop travel books for kids (Isabelle Demenge) Lonely Planet ‘Not For Parents’ series One of the best things about summer is the extra time we have to read together. Here are some ideas to make your summer reading together extra special. I hope you will consider making some of these part of your daily/weekly summer routine throughout the long break. Happy Reading! Have a daily D.E.A.R. time – Drop Everything And Read – a time for the whole family to come together, everybody reading. This could be at any time during the day and can be as short as 15min - but I am sure you might like to make it much longer than that ;) Have a weekly family book club meeting – Choose a book you might all enjoy, then talk about it: what did you enjoy? What are you wondering about? How does it connect to your life, to other books you have read, to the world around you? You can use any kind of book for this – from wordless picture books to chapter books and middle grade novels – as long as it is suitable and accessible to everyone in the family. Make sure you have some special treats ready to enjoy your book club meeting. Discover/choose/make a favorite reading spot together – If you are traveling a lot in the upcoming weeks, you could make it your goal to discover some beautiful reading spots; if you are staying mostly in the same place, create a special place for your daily reading. Make a trip to the library and/or bookstore – explore and choose some books that you want to read this summer, share recommendations with each other. One of our third graders suggested I include a little scavenger hunt. Here are a few ideas what you might try to find: A picture book by an author you know A chapter book by an author you know A nonfiction book about a topic that interests you Are the books arranged in the same way as in our library (fiction by the author’s last name, nonfiction by topic)? Choose an audiobook the whole family can enjoy – You could listen to it together for example during a long car journey. If you have a computer/iPad and Internet access, explore the wonderful reading resources our Tumble Books subscription offers you and your family (feel free to email me in case you have forgotten our username and password.) And here a few title suggestions - books you might enjoy to read this week:
A few picture books around reading and stories How to Read a Story (Kate Messner) The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (William Joyce) Bunny’s Book Club (Annie Silvestro) The Whisper (Pamela Zagarenski) You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You (Mary Ann Hoberman) – reader’s theatre The Storyteller’s Candle (Lucia Gonzalez) A few chapter books/novels for the middle grades about reading and stories The Year of the Book (Andrea Cheng) My Life as a Book (Janet Tashjian) Bronte’s Book Club (Kristiana Gregory) Charlie Joe Jackson’s Guide to Not Reading (Tommy Greenwald) Ink Heart (Cornelia Funke) A few chapter books/middle grades novels that make wonderful family read-alouds Adventures with Waffles (Maria Parr) The Tale of Desperaux (Kate DiCamillo) Alvin Ho: Allergic to the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and Other Tourist Attractions (Lenore Look) Pinocchio (Michael Morpurgo) Rain May and Captain Daniel (Catherine Bateson) Words With Wings (Nikki Grimes) The first week of the summer holidays – are you excitedly looking ahead to the next eight weeks? I bet you are! You have worked hard throughout the school year and it is time for some extra fun, relaxation and new adventures. Here are a couple of ideas of what you might like to do to get ready for the amazing time that lies ahead, to make sure you get and make the most out of it. Happy Summer Reading, Happy Summer Time! Start a Summer Journal / Scrapbook Keeping a summer journal is a wonderful idea of collecting memories, of recording books you have read, places you have seen, people you have met. You can write, draw, sketch, add photos, tickets, newspaper articles, anything interesting or memorable you come across. Make Lists Making lists is a wonderful way of planning and getting excited about the holidays. What do you hope to do this summer? What are you looking forward to reading? Who are you hoping to see? Write down a few of your ideas, either in your summer journal or any other format that works for you. Read! Read! Read! Enjoy all the extra reading time available. Here are a few wonderful books about summer: Picture Books Away (Emil Sher) And Then Comes Summer (Tom Brenner) Jabari Jumps (Gaia Cornwall) A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever (Marla Frazee) Splash Anna Hibiscus (Atinuke) Perfect (Danny Parker) The Boy on the Beach (Niki Daly) Pool (Jihyeon Lee) Beach House (Deanna Caswell) The House Takes a Vacation (Jacqueline Davies) Chapter books and novels for the middle grades Letters From Camp (Kate Klise and M. Sarah Klise) Tortilla Sun (Jennifer Cervantes) Alvin Ho: Allergic to Camping, Hiking and Other Natural Disasters (Lenore Look) Summer Stories (Enid Blyton) Any Which Wall (Laurel Snyder) The Penderwicks (Jeanne Birdsall) Touch Blue (Cynthia Lord) The Simple Things (Bill Condon) The Great Good Summer (Liz Garton Scanlon) Secrets of the Cicada Summer (Andrea Beaty) Charlie Joe Jackson’s Guide to Summer Vacation (Tommy Greenwald) And in case you are wondering, what's on my personal summer reading list, here are some of the books currently downloaded to my Kindle app (as always there is lots more than I most probably can read this summer, but I always like having lots of choice :) Children's literature and novels for the middle grades: Novels for Young Adults and Grown Ups: I hope you'll check in again next Monday to discover more ideas and reading suggestions and explore our Summer Reading Padlet :)
The end of a school year is always a bitter sweet experience, especially at international schools. We fondly look back on the many wonderful times, the memories created during a year of learning together, the achievements we can celebrate together. But there is also often having to say goodbye to students, colleagues and friends. While there are usually just a few in each class, I do have to say goodbye every year to an entire grade level, as they move on to secondary school: our grade 5s. I recently asked them what they take away from their time in the Primary Library and listening to their comments was like watching a time-lapse video, capturing special moments of our time together and also reminding me, how much this special group of students has taught me over the years: sharing stories as read-alouds, talking about books, recommending books to each other, encouraging each other to broaden the genres we read, discovering new authors and their stories, meeting authors who inspired us to read more and write more, celebrating special events connected to reading and books, just to mention a few. In their comments, there was so much passion for books and reading, so much knowledge about books, so much confidence in who they are as readers; just thinking about it now warms my heart and puts the biggest smile on my face. But not just from our fifth graders have I learned again a lot this year; I am taking away so much learning, so many happy memories from reading and learning with all of our students, as we celebrated so many wonderful authors and their stories together this year. I want to thank each and everyone of you and wish you all the best as your reading and learning journey continues - in the HKA Primary School, the HKA Secondary School or another school in Hong Kong or elsewhere in the world. With much gratitude, Tanja (And don't forget to make use of all the wonderful reading recommendations you helped me to put together on our SUMMER READING PADLET!) While we are away during the summer break, George will take good care of our library :)
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Ms. Tanja and Ms. Alison
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