I love lemonade read by Mark Sommerset

Birds, birds, real and imaginary!

Inspired by Janet Martin's lively New Zealand bird, book characters, the juniors participated in a competition whereby they were asked to draw and name their favourite bird, real or made-up. Here are some of the delightful winning pictures. These children each won a signed copy of "Emily the Kiwi plays the ukelele", with a personal note from Janet and a signed bookmark. The gorgeous bird art is on display in the library at present. Do pop in and have a peak. I have managed to put up about half of the pics, and promise to swap and put up the other half in about two week's time. 

  

Storylines Festival information

Go to the Storylines website for information on the Storylines Festival. 

Auckland: 30 August - 10am - 3pm, Aotea Centre.

Enjoy!

Author visits: Janet Martin & The Jampots "wowed" the juniors

Janet Martin and her partner Davyd (The Jampots) entertained the juniors for an hour in the hall yesterday with their lively mix of reading-aloud, storytelling, music and sound-effects. Janet is the author of numerous well-loved picture books about our local birds, and lives locally. There are songs at the back of the books and Janet and Davyd involved the children in sing-along fun and actions. This linked in with the Arts inquiry topic - including music, writing, visual art and a performance. 

The juniors have been creating beautiful bird art of their own which we handed over to Janet for judging. In an email from Janet, she says, "Just been looking through the artwork and you have some budding young artists to be sure". One child in each junior class will win a copy of Emily the Kiwi for their winning bird picture. 

Thank-you so much Janet and Davyd!

I will be selling Janet's books at the front office all week from 3 - 3.30 pm. They are $15 each and $3 per book goes to our school. 

   

Looking at book trailers

The Y6 book club are looking at book trailers to help them formulate their ideas: Here are some links for today's book club gathering:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCYVeWyES38&sns=em - Made with Animoto

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1emxcttgKE&safe=active - Made with PhotoStory3

http://animoto.com/play/x5jAUO16N7SWauHDX10z0A - A short Animoto movie to demonstrate how long the computer version is (30 seconds which equals about 6 images & captions.

http://www.booktrailersforreaders.com/Home+Student+Book+Trailers Many more to choose from!



We will use a template like this for the storyboard.

Off to get my coffee, see you soon!
Kate

Library news

Thank-you to everyone who supported the book fair. On the whole it was a huge success, and thanks to your support, we raised over $2000 in books for the school library! There was a minor glitch at the end where I ended up in bed, sick, so there was a delay in getting a handful of books into children's eager laps. I am hopeful that 99.9% of you have your books. I am waiting for one book, as far as I am aware. If you haven't received a book, please do come and chat to me.

Here are a few fun memories of the event:

As you can see, Geronimo caused quite a stir when he went from class to class to invite children to visit the fair and fill in their wish lists. 

There was quite a buzz in the library for the two days prior to the fair, where children browsed the books and filled in their wish lists.

As the theme was a book fair garden, I enlisted a few talented seniors to help me turn the issue desk into a garden bed of flowers. Given the idea and left very much to their own initiative, I think they did a splendid job!

 Geronimo visited the book fair when it was in full swing and enjoyed meeting some of our Wonderful Woodlands Park children.

We have two other special authors visiting soon - Janet Martin visits the juniors on Monday 18th August and Mark Sommerset visits the juniors and middle school on Thursday 11th September.

Here is some news from Mark Sommerset:

WE WOULD LOVE YOUR SUPPORT
If you love our books, now’s the time to vote them into the WHITCOULLS TOP 50 KIDS BOOKS! It means a lot to us to be on this list as it really raises the profile of our books in store – AND by voting you go in the draw to win one of twenty $100 Whitcoulls gift vouchers! >VOTE HERE< to get in behind BAA BAA SMART SHEEP and I LOVE LEMONADE (and of course any of our other books)

Voting closes on Sunday 17th August 2014.

Click here to vote: http://top50.whitcoulls.co.nz/