No one notices tiny Sally McCabe, but she is “paying super extra special attention” to everything around her…..(“she saw Kevin McKuen get pushed off the slide / and the oncoming tears that he wanted to hide”....) So after taking all this in for a while, Sally takes a stand, in the lunchroom: “I’m tired of seeing this terrible stuff,” she proclaims, sticking her finger emphatically in the air, “Stop hurting each other! This is enough!” Sally & her determination will strike a chord with our young Reed students, many of them poetically vigilant in their efforts to create a just & fair world. Smallest Girl offers them the chance to see not only characters many of us can identify with, but the hero within us who proves that size is no barrier. This book is direct & straightforward; there’s something for everyone to identify with & plenty of opportunity for meaningful discussion as a result. I couldn't wait to share this as with Sally literally being the smallest girl in the smallest grade, this tale proves anecdotally perfect for our K-2 school. District wide, RUSD has chosen the 2017-2018 school year to introduce & implement a even stronger anti-bullying program for our students throughout the grades. Smallest Girl ties in with that, reminding our students that every single one of us has a voice & can be an upstander. Following this story & our discussion on the issues it raises, students will have an opportunity to discuss in particular some of the language, that comes with this program & thereby the tools & understandings at their disposal. Students will also draw & share their favorite scene from the book, sharing why it resonated with them. I very much hope they will share a sense of empowerment they gain from not just the story itself, but what it allows us to share as a community.
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Next week in library, we are all about celebrating our dreams!
What kind of dreamer are you? Peter H. Reynolds share with us - “I’m a dreamer. Always have been. Not all grown ups were happy with my dreaming - my zigzaggy brain - but I was lucky some were. And my parents, well, they let me be me - loved me - and things worked out pretty well” This to me is a pretty good message in itself which is why I chose to share it. It’s not always easy having a “zigzaggy” brain but celebrating who we are as individuals, the dreams we have, the way we create - we all deserve that. I love that Peter Reynolds models that message & honors that beauty of “difference”. Pretty much all child development experts out there will tell you that imagination in kids is one of the best coping tools & mechanisms they can have. Fostering creativity, a space to day-dream, opportunity to create, are key to a child’s development & their ability to build resilience. Therefore, as parents & educators, nurturing their dreams (& ours!) - celebrating them, sharing them, honoring them, is part of our responsibility. And what a fun part of that daunting role of being the "responsible” one! Happy Dreamer is such a brilliant way for us here in the library to offer our own moment of dreaming - to remind ourselves that dreams take many shapes & forms & they change all the time…. We can be “quiet dreamers”, “trumpety zig zag jazz dreamers”, "swing high & touch the sky" dreamers! So when your child comes home on library day, ask what kind of dreamer they are… ask what kind of happy they created during library & maybe, even, take a moment to share what kind of dreamer you sometimes are. Ever had writer’s block? Yup, me too. Annoying isn’t it? I’m pretty confident the smaller people in our lives get it too…. Especially in Writer’s Workshop, the exact time you’re not supposed to get it. Philip Stead however (another of our fabulous Book Fair special books!) has created a light hearted approach to those tricky moments. The narrator, suffering his own moment of writer’s block, decides it’s time to take his dog Wednesday for a walk around the neighborhood. During this seemingly inconsequential daily ritual, we experience through the narrator & through Wednesday all the finer details surround us…. A plethora of the small stuff that can inspire us to create & think big. A whole story is built around their walk, the history of their walks, of the their neighborhood, of relationships, of spilt paint & prehistoric beings - so much in such a small moment of time, we are quickly reminded that ideas really are all around. Nature is such a strong theme in this book, it seemed the perfect excuse for some creative exploration during library time. Nature trays will be available for students to explore - making crayon impressions; playdough impressions; grouping by color or classification & of course our many books on the world around us will be out for investigation too! Really keen readers might even be able to take these inspirations & create a poem or story based on all the ideas around them! Friday March 3rd 2017 saw Reed celebrating Read Across America with out very own Read Across Reed thanks to some very generous volunteers giving up their Friday morning! Not only did we have some fabulous Reed staff members (Mr Kaiser, Mr Hale, Ms Frei, Ms Shanley, Dr Niesyn, Ms Lee & Ms Balfe), sharing their favorite stories, we also had some outside guests to spoil the kids! It was such an honer to have Tiburon Fire & Police - a huge thanks to Officers Jessica Powers, Rick Spaelti (fire), Patricia Seyler & Laurie Nilson, not to mention Officer Josh Small.
On top of these community stars, we also had our very own Superintendent Dr Lynch, Board member Susan Peitz & a local favorite - Ms Alicia Bell our Tiburon children's librarian! Each reader visited two classrooms to share a story & the joy for both students & Reed staff was overwhelmingly evident. We're so lucky to have such an incredibly supportive community to role model & celebrate the value in reading.
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Ms CahillWelcome to the on-line home of Reed Library! I'm so pleased you came to visit & hope you keep coming back to read my blog on our latest happenings, new books & our exciting digital citizenship program! Archives
January 2019
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