Waffle Bytes

(Part of our Stay-At-Home series focused on practical ways you can use a resource to foster creativity, connections, and collaboration.) Maybe during our stay-to-home time is the best time to travel to other states or even other countries, just to visit Museums that we may never get the chance to see in person!  Museums both have had, and have been adding, lots of resources for parents, students and teachers the last several years.  Some of these include: Virtual Tours Apparently there are now 2,500 museums that offer virtual tours from home.  It would take a long time to visit all of them! You can find many of them through Google Arts & Culture .  Take, for example, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.  You can view many of the paintings viewable there - without the crowd - and even learn a bit about them from information added on the page.  Or go to Rome and see the Sistine Chapel. Here are some ways to you might engage students throu...

(Part of our Stay-At-Home series focused on practical ways you can use a resource to foster creativity, connections, and collaboration.) Continuing to write can be very important for students (and adults) right now, not just for learning but also for our social/emotional health.  Writing can help all of us work through emotions, and deal with the uncertainty of the situation many of us find ourselves in currently.  Yet, as many teachers can attest, it can be HARD getting students to start writing. Here are some ideas/resources that can help encourage your child to write: Multi-day writing Journaling example-  COVID-19 Pandemic : "chronicle the changes you observe as your community, the country, and the world respond to Covid19" This document includes a variety of modification for elementary, students with special needs, and even one with added social-emotional reflection questions.  It can be helpful for students to process through their experiences and...

(This is the start of our new Stay-At-Home series focused on practical ways you can use a resource to foster creativity, connections, and collaboration.) There are a variety of companies providing eBooks and/or Audiobooks for parents and educators while students are not able to attend their schools.  But, what can you do with them - or any book for that matter? Teachers : Here are some ideas for ways eBooks or Audiobooks can be used to connect with your students. Share a link to one of your favorite books in your communications with your students, along with why it is one of your favorites.  Invite students to read or listen to it, and invite them to share back a link to one of their favorites. Encourage students to create their own "audiobook" recording of a book for elementary school students (you may give some examples of appropriate books), which you can then share with your elementary teachers for sharing Inspire students to create a book report on what they are...

Save the Children has launched its inaugural summer reading campaign in the United States – Read a Story, Change Their Story – in celebration of the global nonprofit’s 100 th  anniversary. The 100-day campaign, which will conclude on September 8, World Literacy Day, encourages all children, parents, teachers, librarians, caregivers and adults to log their summer reading minutes at  SavetheChildren.org/READ .  Participants can positively impact the lives of children growing up in rural America who do not have adequate access to early education or children’s books, while also promoting literacy in all communities. Every minute logged helps raise awareness and supports Save the Children’s work to improve literacy and change lives. For more information, go to: https://www.savethechildren. org/us/about-us/media-and- news/2019-press-releases/100- days-of-reading

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...

From Christine Schneider, K-12 Education Specialist at Michigan Electronic Library: Are your teachers in need of free resources and ideas for March is Reading Month? Look no further!  The Michigan eLibrary (MeL) is here to help.  Found online at http://mel.org/ , Michigan teachers and students can freely use several million dollars worth of subscription database resources to help support reading.  MeL is a program of the Library of Michigan, and part of the Michigan Department of Education. With funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and also the State of Michigan, MeL provides Michigan residents free access to quality, vetted resources (many of which are K-12 standards and reading level aligned) without logging in.   MeL Databases To quickly access all of MeL’s subscription databases, go to http://mel.org/databases . Here is a quick overview of the databases that can be used to help support reading in March, and any time of the year: ...

From Christine Schneider, K-12 Education Specialist at Michigan Electronic Library: Are your teachers in need of free resources and ideas for March is Reading Month? Look no further!  The Michigan eLibrary (MeL) is here to help.  Found online at http://mel.org/ , Michigan teachers and students can freely use several million dollars worth of subscription database resources to help support reading.  MeL is a program of the Library of Michigan, and part of the Michigan Department of Education. With funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and also the State of Michigan, MeL provides Michigan residents free access to quality, vetted resources (many of which are K-12 standards and reading level aligned) without logging in.   MeL K-12 Portals If you are new to using MeL, there are three K-12 portals:   MeL Kids ( http://kids.mel.org/ ) focuses on students in PreK to 5th grades.  There are four centers, one of which is the very popu...

From the Library of Michigan Michigan Reads! program - a great resource for use with preK-2 students.  Check out the Michigan Reads! link at the bottom for connection to past One Book, One Community resources. The  Michigan Reads!  Programming and Resource Guide 2017  for Bubble Gum, Bubble Gum is  now online !  The guide contains information on early literacy, activities directly related to the 2017 book, templates, coloring, and more!  Written by Meagan K. Shedd, PhD, with contributions by Catherine Lancaster and additional activities by Kris Remenar and Bubble Gum, Bubble Gum author Lisa Wheeler.   Access the Michigan Reads! Programming and Resource Guide 2017  Full Page Spreads here .  Or you may choose to open & print  single pages   of the Michigan Reads! Programming and Resource Guide 2017. Inside the Programming & Resource Guide for  Bubble Gum, Bubble Gum ...

Website recommendation from MeL - Often library staff that are not children’s specialists will need to assist patrons/parents who have children and will be asked for reading tips for their young children. When training or sharing information with other staff members, you might want to recommend the excellent Reading Rockets website. If you are not familiar with Reading Rockets, you might want to spend a little time exploring their site as there is an incredible amount of useful information. Reading Rockets is described as “a national multimedia literacy initiative offering information and resources on how young kids learn to read, why so many struggle, and how caring adults can help.” The following links would be useful for ALL library staff to be aware of, but also the tips could be reproduced on bookmarks to hand out to parents or distribute at programs.  Most importantly the information is given in numerous languages including Spanish, Arabic, Traditional Chinese, Ha...

The Cat in the Hat is running for president as the kids' candidate!  Get your kids involved in getting a basic understanding of platforms, causes and elections.  Each cause has an activity to go along with it.  Suitable for an introduction to the election process. 

From Karren Reish at MeL: Reading Redefined: Deep reading, learning, and the impact of digitization Register today to attend Reading Redefined: Deep reading, learning, and the impact of digitization September 30, 2016 -- 9:30am to 4:00pm Eastern ( 8:30am to 3:00pm Central) Lansing Community College West Campus eBooks. Websites. Blogs. Twitter. Facebook. Many of us are awash in digital information, and in the early 21st century much of our reading has migrated from print on paper to text on screens. What has been little understood or even recognized is the way that our reading habits are affected by the medium that we use. This is starting to change.  Recent scholarship has inspired articles and media reports, and awareness is growing that our choice in reading technology – printed book, Kindle, iPad, computer monitor – makes an important difference in our understanding and retention of what we read. Since eBooks began to appear, but especially af...