Waffle Bytes

Check out the  Promoting STEM Through Literature project/books ! Teachers can use these resources to integrate literature and STEM/Maker activities.  A Design Thinking workbook for students to use is one of the resources. Current Book List: The Secret Subway - Shana Corey Crayon Man - Natascha Biebow and Steven Salerno The World Is Not a Rectangle: A Portrait of Architect Zaha Hadid – Jeanette Winter How to Build a Hug - Amy Guglielmo & Jacqueline Tourville Ada’s Violin - Susan Hood Balloons Over Broadway - Melissa Sweet Beauty and the Beak - Deborah Lee Rose The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind - William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer Claymates - Dev Petty The Most Magnificent Thing - Ashley Spires The Marvelous Thing That Came From a Spring - Gilbert Ford Papa’s Mechanical Fish - Candace Fleming One Plastic Bag - Miranda Paul Ticktock Banneker’s Clock - Shana Keller Twenty-One Elephants - April Jones Prince Whoosh! - Chris Barton

Brought to you from the team at MeL -  Anyone ordering new materials for their library knows firsthand the annual number of books being published has exploded. Some estimates cite the number at over 1 million! How are we ever supposed to keep up with all of these new titles?   NoveList Plus  and  NoveList K-8 Plus  are two great  eResources  available in  MeL  that can become your secret weapons for finding your, or your patrons', next great reads. A source for expert read-alike recommendations,  NoveList  adds about 30,000 new titles every year. Approximately two-thirds of those are for adults and one-third are for kids. There are over 78,000  audiobook  titles and over 34,000 series titles.   With books for every reader both   NoveList   eResources   offer a wide range of features to help you narrow down your search for a great book.   Recommendations by title, author,...

From the Library of Michigan -  Ready to Read Michigan (RTRM)  is gearing up for its second year of providing books and materials to public libraries throughout Michigan for outreach to children ages 0-5.  The program is designed for public librarians to model early literacy skill development directly to families and engage in outreach to early childhood centers, preschool classrooms and daycares throughout their community.   The title for 2019's RTRM is  Touch the Brightest Star  by Christie Matheson, an interactive "journey from sunset to sunrise."  Selected by the Library of Michigan's  Youth Services Advisory Council  for the read-aloud's ability to engage a young audience and its alignment with the 5 Practices of  Every Child Ready to Read ; Talk, Read, Write, Sing, Play.  In preparation for programming in March (Reading Month!), public libraries will receive a kit in late January to early February of 2019, contain...

Brought to you by Christine Schneider of the MeL Team: Why did a scarecrow win the Nobel prize?... Because he was outstanding in his field! For more than a century now, people in the U.S. have celebrated Scarecrow Day on the first Sunday of July.  To help Michigan celebrate on July 1st of this year, we wanted to offer some great ideas for programming at your library or for families to do together at home using MeL resources! 1.       Host a “How to Build a Scarecrow” activity From  General Reference Center Gold : ·          Fragrant scarecrow. (Seasonal Scent) ·          Recycle Sam tin-can scarecrow ·          Corny, creative scarecrows ·          Digital scarecrows. (country lore: readers' tips to live by) ·          N...

The Michigan Open Book Project is a multi-year project to provide Michigan social studies teachers with OER (Open Educational Resources) textbooks that can be downloaded, modified, and used in their classrooms.  These are FREE resources (as licensed under Creative Commons) that you can modify to best meet your needs!  From the site: "A simple math problem:  T+D+TE=MOBP T = Textbooks - your district spends thousands of dollars on them, but they were written for other states and by the time they make it to you, they're already out of date. D = Devices - your district is getting more devices every year.  Perhaps an update to the aging computer lab.  Perhaps a mobile lab of tablets to check out for your classroom.  Maybe you're going 1:1.  Whatever the scenario, more devices are making their way into Michigan schools each year. TE = Teacher Empowerment - The best teachers know their content and know ho...

From the Library of Michigan: "The Michigan Department of Education and the Library of Michigan are pleased to announce the 2017 Michigan Notable Books, 20 books celebrating Michigan people, places, and events. For more than 10 years the Library has been proud to sponsor this program, doing our part to help build a culture of reading here in Michigan."  Check out this year's selection here .  There are many books worth checking out!  If you want more, the site lists all the books selected each year from 1996 to this year. 

Are you an educator in a Title 1 school?  If so, you are eligible to participate in the Open eBooks Initiative! Go here to get more information at Open eBooks .  This does require registering with First Book - which supplies both access to the app and "new books and educational resources - for free and at low cost - to schools and programs serving children in need, from birth to age 18."  From the Library of Michigan: " Open eBooks is an app containing thousands of popular and award-winning titles that are free for children from in-need households. These eBooks can be read without checkouts or holds. Children from in-need families can access these eBooks, which include some of the most popular works of the present and past, using the Open eBooks app and read as many as they like without incurring any costs. The goal of Open eBooks is to encourage a love of reading and serve as a gateway to children reading even more often, whether in school, at librari...