Library Without the Library, Part Two

Okay, so you know that old saying about the best laid plans...?

Getting hand, foot and mouth disease (ew) was not in my Planner!  How did that happen?  So the last week and most of this week has been taken up with a hodgepodge of substitute plans and half days and basically phoning it in.  Not how I like to wrap up the school year.

So, I guess you call this post Library Without the Library AND the Librarian!

Here's how I dealt with the dealt...cards I was...and not in any particular order.

Pale Male:  Citizen Hawk of New York

My firsties were working hard on their animal research projects, so I called in the book Pale Male:  Citizen Hawk of New York by Janet Shulman and illustrated by Meilo So for my substitute and then had her show them the Pale Male website.  Of course I didn't realize that the You Tube clips would be blocked at school so I guess you could call it a Pale Male Fail.  OH!  That's a good one.

For one of my other classes I took the sage advice of one of my Tweeps, @ontheshelf4kids , aka Ellen, who suggested that I have my substitute read any one of Willems' pigeon books and then use this handy cheat sheet to have them draw the pigeon.  Thank you, Ellen!  I can't wait to see how they came out.

And finally my second graders practiced their skills of estimation by using 600 Black Spots, a pop-up book by David A. Carter.  I cannot take credit for this excellent connection to the math curriculum.  That goes to one of my wonderful colleagues in my county.  You slowly open the book to each page and ask the students to estimate how black spots are on each page.

I also had my substitute just read some Really Good Books to my kids and, I must admit, I cancelled a couple of classes as well.  With state testing in the library, library in the classrooms and the librarian at home, we're just going to chalk this week up to experience!