The last day before Christmas break was our big reading party!! What fun we had too! Our school decided to try a year without using Accelerated Reader (AR). You can read about our thinking on why we made this change to let AR go by clicking here.
This was our 2nd party of the year to celebrate reading (read about our first party by clicking here). In the past years with AR, we only had 2 parties and not everyone got to participate. This year we are celebrating 4 times and EVERYONE gets to be involved with celebrating how great reading can be. Yay for that!!
We picked the theme of The Polar Express, which is great for this time of year of course. Most doors and halls were all decked out with trains, snowy trees, and snow flakes. Lots of 3-D snowflakes were made and hung too.
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| Click on picture to be taken to Chasing Supermom Blog |
Lori, your Polar Express day looks absolutely adorable!! How creative and fun! I'm sure your kids just had a blast 🙂 Thanks so much for stopping by my blog and pinning my Groundhog Day Unit! I genuinely appreciate it! Happy New Year!
I hope your school sticks with this every year. I think it celebrates being reading much more so than AR. 🙂
❀ Tammy
Forever in First
Lori, Where do I begin to tell you how much I love this post??? I love that EVERY child is invited to the reading pary! I love the decorations for Polar Express! I love the graham cracker trains! Love, love, love! Hmmm … something my school used to do to celebrate reading was to have BEAR breakfasts (Be Enthusiastic About Reading). The premise was to invite students and their parents to school early to read. They were to bring their own breakfast and sit around and read. It sounds crazy, but it was amazing!! I remember one family bringing cereal, milk, etc and the dad reading aloud as they all ate. Another family stopped at McDonalds. Some parents brought their own reading material. Others borrowed books from my room. Because of our limited parking situation, we had to have different grades do this on different days. Golly … just writing about this has got me convinced that I MUST do this in 2013!!
Camille
An Open Door
P.S. I love living in sunny California, BUT I am jealous of your indoor hallways. We have no such thing. All of our classrooms open to the outside because we don't have the snow, etc. to deal with. I love the sunshine, but wish we had hallways to decorate and to read in!!
What a fabulous day! I love how the whole school is involved. We haven't done anything like this in ages. I might have to share your post with my staff:)
Happy New Year, Lori!
Barb
PS Camille's bear breakfast looks fun, too!
Thanks Khrys! We had a lot of fun that day! Happy New Year to you too!
I hope we decide to stick with this way of celebrating reading also, Tammy. So much better than the alternative!
Camille, that is a GREAT idea!! I just love that. I will have to bring that idea up to my committee the next time we meet. I can see how much fun the students would have with their families eating breakfast together and reading. 🙂 Thanks soo much for sharing that!
Thank you Barbara! I like that the whole school can be involved in reading also. So many ways and ideas to do this. And I agree, Camille's idea is great- sounds like a lot of fun! 🙂