It's a Kiwi Craze

We are trying to offer healthier choices in our new library café so we asked for kiwi. We were told “kids won’t buy kiwi”, but we talked them into letting us try with a few kiwi.

Well the students at CCHS have gone crazy over the kiwi. We sold 60 the first week and ran out twice that week. We are pushing the healthier snacks like kiwi and plums over pop tarts. Wondering how you eat a Kiwi at school? Well, cut it in half and use a plastic spoon to scoop the kiwi out of it's own natural bowl.

Be Our Valentine

We are going to host a small Valentine Event in the Library this year. We are keeping it simple. We will post signs around the school saying “Be our VALENTINE, bring your lunch to the Library to eat on Feb. 14^th”. I have repainted some wooden hearts we already had, black and white. I will use these hearts as my table displays, with some books that the student book club has picked out as good Valentines Books. I will have cards by the display saying “It’s not just BLACK and WHITE, it’s read all over”. I will then have the student’s name that picks the book for the display. “Recommended by Susie Que”. Then I have a little surprise planned. The surprise will not be advertised on our signs or in the announcements, but for those that come to eat their lunch in the Library, we will be giving them a small valentine, a warm cupcake. Lucy will be making them in her, Babycakes, cupcake maker. We will have several frostings available and they can choose and frost their cupcake for dessert.

Juneteeth in February, Anyone

Black History Month 2010 we will be celebrating “Juneteenth”.

Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the US. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19th in Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now now free. -www.juneteenth.com

Our activities for the celebration will include an art display by Annie Lee. Annie Lee is known for her realistic and humorous portrayals of contemporary and historical African American family life. Once again I purchased a wall calendar of Annie Lee’s work, this will give 12 pictures to display. Tip: wall calendars go on sale during the month of Feb. so plan ahead to save money.

We will have another Tasting. In all my research on Juneteeth Celebrations, people say it is a must to have a red soda. Because Juneteenth originated in Texas, we have chosen Big Red Soda. Big Red is not distributed in our corner of NC (northeast), so most of our students have not tasted Big Red before. We picked up our soda at Wal-Mart in Charlotte NC, while we were attending the AASL conference. We will have teachers sign-up in advance to bring in whole classes for the Tasting. I can accommodate 9 classes of 30 students. The teachers will collect the money for the tasting (this one being 10 cents per student) . Any student not wanting to participate can opt out of the Tasting, but will still come for the very short PowerPoint Presentation.

So that is our plan. I will post a picture or two after the event and leave a comment.

Spa Day! Lunch Time Treat In the Library

Sometimes, I think we look for the impossible and try and make it happen, IN THE LIBRARY. Lucy & Ethel’s latest scheme was to let the students sign up for Self-Pedicures. The students that signed-up got to bring their lunch in and relax in our Lunch Time Spa. They loved it!

Here is how it worked.

We had a sign-up with 40 spots for self – pedicures

(2 people per lunch, 4 lunches per day, for 5 days)

We only had 17 to sign-up, but of this 17, five were boys. All who participated seemed to have a great time. Now, other students who did not sign up, want to know if we will be doing it again.

We set up the Professional Library like a spa with the following

2 foot baths (loaned to us from teachers)

2 metal pedicure sets (from the Dollar Store)

40 nail files (2 packs from the Dollar Store) (students kept files)

Bag of Cotton balls (from the Dollar Store)

Nail polish remover (donated)

Lotion (donated)

Corn starch packing peanuts for toe spreaders (donated)

Pedicure Book (We bought at Amazon)

Towels (lots of towels) (from my house)

Barbersol (that blue disinfectant you see at the Beauty Shop) (donated)

Lysol (to spray foot baths between students)

Nail Polish-around 50 bottles (donated from a Librarian at the Middle Store)

30 cup coffee maker (to heat up water for foot baths)

Big Plastic bucket (to dump water in between students)

Eucalyptus Leaves (for floating in foot baths) (donated)

Are You Ready For Some Football!

This idea came from Ricky. He said we should have a paper football tournament in the Library. We did, and we called it the Intramural Paper Football Tournament. This took very little time to set-up.
Here is how we set it up:
• Made a student signed-up sheet for their lunch bell (we have 4 lunches).
• Made a play-off chart with brackets.
• Set up tables and ran a strips of painters tape down the middle for the 50 yard line.
• Made paper footballs out of neon paper. (Very easy to see.)
• Made field goal post out of a string of yarn tied around 2 full 12oz bottles of water.
• Set up a computer with an on-line stop watch.
• Read the rules of how to play and flipped a coin to see who would kick-off & who would receive.

We played during lunches until we had a winner from each lunch, then we moved the game to 8 am before school. At 8 am busses have arrived and the tardy bell does not ring until 8:20. So winner of 1st lunch plays winner of 2nd lunch & 3rd lunch winner plays 4th lunch winner. Then the next morning at 8am we had the final playoff for school champion of paper football. That student won a $4.00 Nerf football.

Things we will do better next time:
We will ask the PE dept. for student score keepers and a referee for each table. It was too much for Lucy and Ethel to do with sometimes 3 games going on at once. Plus the Library was still open and we had to keep running up to check out books. We will spread tables out and have a computer stop watch for each table so that games can start at different times.

Above and Beyond:
We only had 14 participates, so I gave each participate a small gator-aide and two fun size candy bars during the lunch time games. This was a surprise to students, they were not told they would get snacks at sign-up or I would have had students signing up just for treats. We told them we were carb loading before the big game. We had hoped for more students to sign-up. After other students walked in an watched I think we will have a bigger turn-out if we do this again.

In-House-Field-Trips

We are making a book of In-House-Field-Trips that our teachers can look through and sign-up for. With the high price of gas and the difficulty in finding a bus driver, this is a good alternative for field trips. Some of these programs will be free. Others will have a small fee, if there is food or if we have to pay someone to come in for the program. We will design each program to fit into the time period allotted for a normal class (in our case 90 minutes). The students will participate during their regular class period and not miss any other classes.

So look for Blog Labels with In-House-Field-Trip

"I love the Library" Lunch Sweepstakes

From: lucyethel47, 1 hour ago

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This powerpoint shows pictures from a contest that we designed to reward our high school patrons for signing in to the media center--it was a way to reward our "regulars".


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"I Love the Library" patron contest for our "regulars"

Ethel and I decided we needed a way to reward those students who come to the library and hang out before school every morning. Our overdue contests reward a whole class--some of whom may or may not come to the library much. Our Twelve Days of Christmas return book contest can possibly reward a student who never comes to us. We have about 60-75 students who come to the library and hang out with us each morning. To reward someone from that group, and to reward those folks who sign in and out like we ask them to, we came up with this activity, that we just completed at 12:00 today. We thought we'd share this with the group-- you can change and adapt it at will. We called it the "I love the Library Lunch Sweepstakes". For 3 weeks, we ran the check in-check out list after our morning crowd left. We put those names in a drawing for our contest. The more times a student visited us during that time, the more times their name went in the drawing. They had to sign out as well (something our crowd often forgets to do). We drew a name 2 weeks ago--the prize was a lunch for the winner and 3 of her friends who had to have the same lunch (we have 4 lunches at our school). Ethel and I decided on the menu when we prepared the PR for the event. We prepared and served them: Spaghetti Carbonara, a caesar salad, french bread, chocolate mousse, and iced tea. We donned chefs jackets, and closed the library to other students during that lunch. We played Celtic music (yes, we have a mixed theme--it is St. Pat's, but, it is also Pasta Month). We set a beautiful table, with peach blossoms from my yard. Ethel and I shopped on Saturday (we are friends and neighbors as well as colleagues), she cooked the bacon yesterday, and mixed the mousse yesterday. We used a bagged Caesar mix--I tossed it before they came. We heated the bread in the microwave in my back office--and I cooked the vermicelli in my Wolfgang Puck Electric pressure cooker in the back office. Beth threw together the pasta dish in an electric frying pan in front of the student winners in the main part of the library. We served them at a beautifully decorated library table! Ethel ran off a history of spaghetti carbonara and chocolate mousse and had it at the tables. A fine time was had by all! Cost--around $20.00. We paid for it with money we make selling hacky-saks, gel pens, etc.

We Check-Out Balls--To Those Who Need Them

No pun intended, well... yes the pun was intended. But we really do check-out balls. The students can come in at lunch and check-out a soft football, kush ball, or juggling balls. We also have bubbles and a set of indoor horseshoes for check-out. Our Library opens up into the school's courtyard, where there is nothing but grass and concrete. Last year some of the boys brought there own football and accidentally hit someone with it. Then we had a rule that you could not throw balls in the courtyard. The boys were sad and bored, to the point I saw them throwing wadded up paper balls. So I went to the Principals and asked about the soft balls. They agreed, and that's the story of how the Library checks out balls to those who need them.

P.S. We tape barcodes on a sheet of paper with the ball type and color beside it. Then we just scan the paper for check-out. All bubbles, balls, etc. are due back in the Library at the end of each lunch. We do not have any problems with them returning items. We do lose a lot of balls on the roof of the school.

We’re Calling it Coloring Therapy

Here’s the deal-- I was unpacking something and it had 4 nice big sheets of paper in it, you know the kind of paper we use to draw on in 1st grade. I called out to Lucy, “Hey I have an idea--let’s put this paper out on the tables at lunch and just let the students color.” And that’s what we did. I taped the paper down on the tables and set out colored pencils. Made a sign that said “Let’s Color”. The students took over from there--during most lunches I had a small group around the tables coloring and laughing. And I feel better that I got one more use out of the packing paper before throwing into the landfill.

Lucy says: and no one colored or wrote anything inappropriate!!

P.S. Coloring Therapy is a real thing.

Mini Workshop, Classes and Events

Lucy and I love to hold small workshops, classes or events for the students, during lunches or after school. We believe that learning can be fun. Some of the workshops and events we have shared over the last few years are listed below. We keep the library open to the rest of the student body during most of our workshops. Sometimes a student is too shy to attend the class or workshop, but will watch intently. This is ok with us because they are getting something from the activity and maybe next time they will join in. All teachers and instructors donate their time. We have no budget for these activities. You can get started by finding out what special skills or talents your staff has, and talking them into sharing those skills or talents with small groups of students. Let us know what you are doing. We are always looking for another great idea.

Knitting Lessons (during lunches)

Lucy has given knitting lessons for the past 3 years. There is a fee for yarn and needles or the student can bring their own, and then the class is free. We invite all the faculty that can knit to come and help with the lessons.

Calligraphy Classes (during lunches)

We have several of our faculty members who can do calligraphy. During lunches, once a week, for a month, we held a mini course in calligraphy. (The teacher who was the instructor had a planning bell during our lunches). There was a fee for this class, $2.00 for a calligraphy pen or free if you brought your own pen. We had faculty and students signing up for this one and about half were boys.

Ballroom Dance Lessons (during lunches)

A month before the prom one year we held dance lessons during lunches. Our theater teacher had planning during our lunches and came in to do a mini dance lesson on a different dance, once a week for a month. We did the Waltz, the ChaCha, the Rumba, and even a little swing dancing. Believe it or not, one week we had to send the boys to the lunch room to find girls to dance with. Yes, we had more boys than girls. After this month of moving tables we went out and purchased Magic Sliders for our tables, so they would move easier.

Line-Dancing Class (after school)

Another year, the week before spirit week we held a line-dancing class to get ready for the big homecoming dance. Once again we had a teacher who could teach us some line dances. We had her teach "The Hustle" (because Lucy and Ethel danced the hustle when they were in high school) and "The Cha Cha Slide". (Lucy and Ethel were clueless to this one, but liked the music.) I brought the CD called "30 Greatest Party Songs Ever" (from Drew's Famous Party Music Series). After the lesson we even had a little fun doing the "Macarena" and the "Chicken Dance".

Chop Stick Workshop (after school)

We have a small Thai community in our county. We asked a couple who had owned a Thai Restaurant to come in and teach us how to use Chop Sticks. We had about 16 faculty and students sign up. The fee was $2.00 for chopsticks and the food to practice with. I got the chop sticks from the local Chinese restaurant for .10 each. We also had a student who had lived in Japan for 6 years and an English teacher on hand to help teach. This workshop was great fun.

Tie Your Tie Workshop (How to tie a necktie) (during lunches)

In this workshop we teach students how to tie a necktie. This workshop is free, but we asked the students to bring in a necktie. It turned out most did not bring their own ties. I put up a flier at my church for the men to clean out their closets of their old, out dated ties and donate them to the library. I now have over 60 ties to use for this workshop. We get faculty members and retired men from the community to come in during their lunch to teach. We set up some full-length mirrors, print off a few handouts they can take with them after the lesson. Voila, we have another workshop. We also pass out the ties to the boys who show up to Graduation without a tie.

Heads Up Workshop (How to get and keep good posture) (during lunches)
After the first tie your tie workshop we thought we should do one mainly for girls. I wanted to have a "How to Walk in Heels" workshop, but it turned into a good posture workshop. One of our local chiropractors sent us his assistant to talk to the students about good posture, heavy backpacks and other spinal issues. This workshop was free to students.

Yoga Class (after school)

One of our teachers taught a yoga class after school, once a week, for a month. This class was free, but we had some money left over from the chop stick workshop so we brought some yoga mats and had a drawing each week for a yoga mat. Then we turned down the lights, turned on the music, and twisted our bodies into pretzels. We thought this would mainly be a girl attended class, but 50%, who attend were boys.

Yoga for Stress relief (during lunches)
One year we held this workshop the week before exams. We had the same teacher, who taught yoga come in and talk to students about yoga posses they could in their seats, or at a 3 minute stretch break, during exams.

Afternoon at the Movies (after school)
Our school has a Public Performance Copyright License for movies. Sometimes we show a movie after school just for fun. Our school runs late buses at 4:50, so our movie must be fairly short. I look for movies that run about an hour and a half. Be careful with the time. I researched the time lenght of Hitchcock's THE BIRDS and it would work in my time schedule. However, I had looked up the time on the VHS tape and then I rented it on DVD. The DVD had added footage that the tape did not have, so the students had to leave before the movie ended. The movie is free and we serve all the popcorn they can eat. We sell drinks and that covers the popcorn cost.

Scary Smelly Cheese Tasting (after school)
We did this around Halloween and the students paid $2.00 for the cheese tasting. We showed about 5 minutes of a video called "The Cheese Nun" about how the mold in cheese is different from region to region. We talked to the students about veined cheeses, then we had a tasting of four different cheeses.

Mexican Hot Chocolate (after school)

We sold Mexican Hot Chocolate for Hispanic Heritage Month Sept. 15 - Oct 15th

Macarena Mondays (during lunches)

A quick and easy event is to have Macarena Mondays. Durning the last 5 or 10 minutes of each lunch move your tables and put on some music and everybody now, LET'S MACARENA. (LIMBO anyone?)

Bringing kids into the LMC--with a Slam Board

Remember back in the day when we had Slam books--those composition books that had one question per page, and you wrote your favorite singer, or cutest boy, etc. on each page? Well, Ethel adapted this idea to our media center board, and it is a hit! We have an blackboard our reading area. We've made it a slam board--each day we are posting a different question, and the students run in to put up an answer (using sidewalk chalk)! So far our questions have been: what is your favorite candy? what superhuman power would you want? who is your favorite teacher? what makes you LOL? what's your middle name?

Lucy and Ethel firmly believe that if we get students to love coming to the media center, we'll eventually get a book or magazine in their hands!