Lucy is Cooking Again!

As anyone who has followed this blog knows, Ethel and I know the way to a teenagers' heart is food! We cook a lot in the library, and always tie it to education--I mean, how can food NOT be educational! I thought I would share my most recent cooking exploits, so you can adapt this book-themed unit to your situation. I have a 45 minute flex bell (I have 15 seniors assigned to me, and my assistant Ethel, runs crazy open library), so I had to come up with ways to entertain, educate, and delight them each day. We have a reading day, a study day (I use the word study loosely), and so I try to teach them a little something on the other days--life skills! They wanted to know how to cook cheap, easy food at college, so I have started a weekly cooking lesson, that they will soon take ownership of--they each will bring a recipe and food to share each Friday! I only cook enough for each to have a taste--that way, I do not compete with the cafeteria. Our flex is also after lunch, and as I said, there is much education involved. And the super cool thing is that because Ethel is operating open library, the walk-in kids drift in and just watch what I am doing! That lets them see the librarian in a whole new educational and fun role.

My book tie-ins are Michael Pollan's, Food Rules and Alicia Silverstone's The Kind Diet. I also showed my students two videos that I streamed from the Internet: Jamie Oliver's talk on The Ted at http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jamie_oliver.html and Jamie Oliver's first episode of Food Revolution at ABC.com. I also read them sections of Food Rules. For one cooking class I brought in my electric frying pan, hooked it up on the floor of the library, and stir-fried bok choy. I had purchased bags of already cooked brown Minute Rice which I cooked in the microwave in the back of the library for only 90 seconds! For the Bok Choy stir fry, I just put a bit of salt and olive oil in the pan, threw in the washed and chopped bok choy, and added soy sauce, ginger, and garlic. Then I added chicken broth that had a little corn starch mixed in. Served over rice! Half of my class had never had bok choy, and everyone tried it! It was great.

The next cooking class I taught them to make a quick pasta--in the electric skillet. I pre-cooked the pasta in the skillet before they arrived (bow-ties), threw some edamame in with it for the last five minutes, and had it drained and ready. I then put olive oil, a big chopped elephant garlic, salt, pepper, and sauteed it all for a bit. Then I threw in the drained pasta and edamame, and one cup of reserved cooking water, and added parmesan cheese. They loved it--cheap, simple, and healthy. They also really were engaged in the two videos. I am hoping it helps them focus on healthy eating, saving money on food, and provides them with some life long skills--and all from their library!

Sweet, Sweet, Donations

Our students sometimes have to buy their Summer Reading Books and some students prefer to buy the class novels that are assigned in English. The English Department chair asked me to come up with a way to encourage the students to donate these book to the library. Maybe a prize if they donate their Summer Reading book, she suggested. I have thought about this for about 6 months. I could see giving a prize or reward every time a student donated a book could get pricey. After many months of pondering, here is my idea. If a student donates a classroom novel or their Summer Reading book their name goes in the hat once for every book they donate. In May I will randomly draw a name from the hat for what we are calling a “Dessert Party Lottery”. The winner of the Lottery will pick the dessert of their choosing from a menu provided by Lucy and I. The winner may invite 5 of his or her friends to join them for this treat. The notices went out 3 days ago and I have already had 11 books donated.

Kindle for PC

I'd like to share a new way to enjoy books--without the high cost of a Kindle. I really want a Kindle, but have to get my girls through college first. Amazon is now offering a great AP for those of us who can't afford a Kindle yet--the Kindle for PC! It is FREE! It took me mere minutes to download the free software on my laptop. While not as totally cool as the Kindle, it really works well. In seconds, I purchased and downloaded my first book. I have also made a point to look for free books each week from the Kindle store which I have downloaded. I have had no trouble reading from the screen. By the way, one of the free book downloads this week is a Young Adult novel! I have pointed this out to some of my students as a great way to save money on textbooks next year when they are in college--the classics are free as well! Hope someone can use this tip!

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.

Aleuts or Unangan original inhabitants of the Aleutian Islands

After reading the book Aleutian Sparrow by Karen Hesse, I decided to showcase a moment in history about the Aleuts of Alaska for Native American Heritage Month. If you are not familiar with the story, the gist of it all is, that the US Government sent the Aleuts of Alaska to internment camps during WWII.


Our Activity for Native American Heritage Month was a "bulletless" Power Point about the Aleuts during WWII. We had a display of Inuit Artwork (I could not find a wall calendar of Aleut Artwork).


We had a Tasting of Smoked Salmon Appetizer, (yes this was an expensive one). We chose Smoked Salmon because the Aleuts were highly skilled at attaining their food from the land and sea, such as sea lions, seals, otter, salmon, birds and such. The cost of this tasting was 50 cents per student. We had 6 whole classes to come in for the tasting, around 130 students over a two day period. Each student was able to have two appetizers each. A lot of our students had never tasted smoked salmon before. Our outdoorsy types seemed to love the smoked salmon.

Things I Learned
*A Smoked Salmon Fillet (1.5 lbs) will make over 200 small appetizer. I over bought.
*You must make the appetizers no more than an hour before serving. Crackers will get soggy.
*Need to bring lemon juice to wash hands. Hands smelled like fish all day long.

Yes, it's OK to Eat in the Library

Coming to Charlotte for AASL? Come by our booth, and participate in one of our tastings! See the next blog post for the Animoto of some of the tastings we have had in the media center! We are very excited to be presenting at the Exploratorium during the AASL Conference in Charlotte on November 5, 2009.

Our flyer is here.

AASL Exploratorium Session

Ethel and I are packing up and taking our little show on the road! We will be giving an Exploratorium session in Charlotte, NC on Thursday at AASL. We don't think our video or are handout link is working, so I am going to attach both of those here! Hope to see many of you in Charlotte! We are going to be at Booth 46.

Yippee!! New Post! New Idea! Bookmobile!

Hello, followers--excuse our tardiness in providing a new post--those of you at a high school know how hectic the beginning and ending of school can be.

So, here is our new idea--we have been truly agonizing over the loss of our patrons this year--due to circumstances beyond our control. Students have less free time, hall visits are nil, lunch times are shortened,English teachers are in trailers, etc. But I have a lovely book budget, and new books arriving daily. We have a great collection. So, Ethel and I decided last week we would have to take the library to the students. We have a cart we were given when they were discarded from a local store. I placed a nice selection of books on it, and off I went to the trailers last Friday. We brought it back--Ethel decorated it. I went back to the trailers. I logged into Destiny in the classroom, and checked in and out books right there! I can't say I checked out tremendous numbers, but it was more than we have been checking out throughout the day. Check out our pictures!

Did you know, March 14 is “National Potato Chip Day”

I am reposting this blog post from last year. Today we had the Potato Chip Tasting and it went great. Twenty-six teachers and students joined in on the fun. As you can see in the picture, I made a grid on a sheet of paper and under each chip the students found the type/flavor. The cost was 50 cents. For 50 cents, they received 12 potato chips and a bottle of water. The cost of the event was around $43.00.


Well, Lucy and Ethel are way too busy this year to pull it off, but next year we will be having a Potato Chip tasting on National Potato Chip Day. We've had the idea of a Potato Chip Tasting for a while now. The idea came from my husband, Fred. A couple of years ago Fred decided to have a Potato Chip tasting party at our house, similar to wine tasting.

He ordered 12 different (you might say odd) potato chips from Tims Cascade Snacks and set them around the house in bowls with numbers on them. Party goers had a card with two columns. One column was numbered 1-12, the other had a list of all the chips' names. They were to taste the chips and match the number of the chips with the correct name. After the tasting we had lots of sandwich fixings and party goers made a sandwich, and well, we had plenty of chips to go with the sandwiches.

At school I will probably not do the sandwich part just have the tasting. That will keep the cost down. This tasting will have a small cost due to the fact that chips are not cheap. We will also sign up in advance and limit the number of participants so we can better plan. I am posting this over a year in advance from when we plan to have this event. If anyone tries it this March please, please, let us know how it goes and give us feed back and tips for success.

P.S. I want to give a shout out to Fred, who just happens to be my husband and the Director of Media and Technology for our school system. Fred is very supportive of Lucy and Ethel schemes for the most part. I think we scare him on occasion.

Shakepearean Insults

Ok, sometimes we all need a good laugh or maybe a new insult. This website will provide both. Ye Olde Official Shakespearean Insult Kit. I have shared this with our teachers who teach Shakespeare. It can be a quick activity with the students so then they to will be armed with insults like: "Swim with leeches thou frothy beef-witted nit", instead of the F bomb.

Homemade Marshmallow

Our no overdue book reward this time was, HOT CHOCOLATE with HOMEMADE MARSHMALLOWS. This was a simple reward. We used instant hot chocolate that I received for Christmas. Heated up two 30-cup coffee pots with water. Bought 4 bags of cookies. And I made the marshmallows from an Alton Brown recipe. Most students and adults for that matter, did not know you could make marshmallows at home. They must me made at lease one day in advance, because they have to start drying out, so you can cut and handle them. We also borrowed a case of coffee mugs from my church to make it more special. The bonus that day was the reward fell, my accident on a school board walk-thought of our school. So I put some marshmallows on a silver tray and amused and astonished the Central Office and School Board. Never pass up an opportunity to showcase your Library.

How To Get The Books Back

Do you have a problem with overdues and sometimes wonder what to do? Well Lucy and Ethel certainly do. We thought long and hard to come up with a way to reward good behavior and not to reward and reinforce negative behavior. Here is what we came up with. Once every nine weeks we have a random drawing. We are looking for a class with no overdue books. The first class we find with no overdue books wins a reward party. All classes that were drawn and did not win because of overdue books are read this notice. "Good News and Bad News. This proclamation is to inform the class of ________, that your class was the (what ever # the class was drawn) class to be drawn for the (we state the reward) for No Overdue Books Reward. Unfortunately, this class has (state the # of overdues in class, just the # not their names) student/students with overdue books. The next reward will be (state a date)." This has worked pretty well for us. We has had more students checking to see when books are due and renewing. The day of the drawing we make an announcement during class time telling them they only have 30 more mins. to turn in overdues before we draw. This bring in a ton of overdue books. (Isn't it amazing how many student have the overdue book with them at school and still do not turn them in, until you ask them for the book). And it does hurt that Lucy and Ethel give darn good reward parties. I will list a few: Pancake Breakfast, Ice Cream Floats, Christmas Party Luncheon, Hot Chocolate with Homemade Marshmellows. We would love to heard your thoughts on overdues.