With the way my library is currently arranged, the way traffic flows, it's been an issue for me this year to figure out how to keep the kids busy while they wait for their turn to get books, as well as what to do with the kids who've already gotten theirs. So today I took some inspiration from "The Centered School Librarian" whose blog I follow and whose book (The Centered School Library) I read last year, and whose pins I've been following lately on Pinterest. Does that make me sound like a stalker??
I started simple today. Just a last-minute decision to give it a try. So, I googled "Halloween bookmarks" and printed some off. I was reading The Haunted Hamburger just for fun this week, so I found an accompanying activity. And then I visited the Centered School Library blog and found a cute "how to draw bats" sheet. I ran some copies, set out some crayons, and put my plan in place.
When the students came in, I sat them on the carpet and read our story:
This is such a fun story!! The kids (k-5) are all loving this book. It's a ghost story with 3 other ghost stories within it. But they're funny, not scary.
To go with the story, the kids could do a Haunted Hamburger activity:
All they had to do was make a haunted face of some sort on it and color it in. I thought it was gonna be a "lame" center, but it was by far the favorite!!
Another option was for my kids who like to draw or don't like to color. I had this cute, easy "how to draw a bat" paper. Holy cow, some of these kids are really good at this!!
The next 3 tables were just bookmarks they could color -- no biggie.
So, after he story I explained the centers and the rules. I let 6 kids start getting books and sent everyone else a few at a time to pick a table. The kids who were getting books went and got books instead of just wasting time on the computers searching so they could get to the centers. The kids who were in them were happy to wait. There was even a class where the kids didn't want to get their books cu they liked he centers so much. So... We'll keep this up this week and I'll get some more centers ready for next week!
