Happy Book Week!
Congratulations to Shaun Tan for his gold-medal award-winning picture book, The rules of summer:
Illustrator Shaun Tan – ‘Rules of summer’ [HD] Books and Arts Daily, ABC RN
Our school library is being transformed by the arrival of many colourful and clever displays. The theme this year is Connect to Reading.
Click HERE to view a Flickr slideshow.
It’s been a long time since I’ve made a “shoestring makeover” update!
The school library’s “WELCOME” mat had lost all of its signage due to four years of kids trampling in and out. With only an hour to spare, I cut some paper templates freehand and used three cans of spray enamel to create this new message. Final detailing with permanent black marker.
Paper templates in place, ready for the (first) white layer:
The original mats in place on opening day, 2010:
One more elephant squeezes in!
Here’s a great book trailer for the picture book:
The elephant’s child
UPDATE:
Just before 11.00 this morning, the school library at Penrith Public School was invaded by a herd of tiny elephants, to help celebrate National Simultaneous Storytime 2014:
A slideshow of chick images: HERE
Class 1IW brainstormed the text to accompany a slideshow on PhotoPeach:
Chicks ‘R’ Us
Here is a new PhotoPeach digital slideshow which archives some of the photos and craftwork of this year’s K-2 Chinese New Year celebrations:
Year of the Horse at Penrith PS
The inclement weather on Friday gave Class 1HB an additional lesson in the school library, so we brought out the collection of puppets and brainstormed a new digital story:
A lemur’s tale
Dragon parade!
The Stage 1 students are already deep into their plans for celebrating Chinese New Year. Above is a PhotoPeach slideshow of our school’s first annual dragon parade, way back in 2005. It’s always a startling start to the concept of K-2 assemblies for the newly-arrived Kindergarten students!
Year of the Horse
Thanks Gary Warrick for the great pic, too.
Over the weekend, was the 44th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing. Penrith Public School’s then-fledgling magazine was named after NASA’s Apollo program.
“The ‘Apollo’ magazine blast off is taking place. Like its big brother at Cape Kennedy this vehicle is one of adventure and discovery… This is our magazine’s beginning. Who knows to what heights our ‘Apollo’ may climb?” – A.K. Allan, Principal (1968).
“We cannot thank the Department enough (that poor old lady so often criticised for her many shortcomings) for its assistance in transforming a once useless area into a lovely place [a new assembly hall] where the WHOLE SCHOOL can experience together matters of such earth-shattering importance as the T.V. viewing of the initial landing of man on another world, and the visit of Miss Australia to our school…” – A.K. Allan, Principal (1969). Artwork by Mrs Casey.
Apollo 11 restored Moon footage
Apollo display at the Smithsonian Institute’s Air & Space Museum, 1984
The same display at the Smithsonian Institute’s Air & Space Museum, 2013
Lunar rover at the Smithsonian Institute’s Air & Space Museum, 2013. Identical vehicles were used in the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 missions.
“What I did in the holidays”.
Well, one thing *I* did was to get Issue #2 of “iLeader” professional journal (of the School Library Association of NSW) approved and off to the printers. After getting a designer friend to help with creating a slick, new, modern template for the first 2013 issue of the journal, this time she was busy to help out so I had to do it All By Myself.
Hi all – from Long Service Leave Land,
I’m not sure how many of you are aware that the free online facility for making digital slideshows, Photo Peach, had a massive crash in mid December, when its owners were trying to do a major upgrade. Despite their efforts, two backup servers failed simultaneously and they’ve unfortunately lost about 50% of people’s stored data between two specific dates. Sadly, this has meant numerous pieces of my work with students have lost their images – and sometimes the captions as well. The good news is that I can slowly rebuild the slideshows (which will give each one a new URL, and will require lots of changes to old blog entries and bookmarks) – thank goodness I saved all the students’ paper storyboards for the trickiest ones (ie. the Stage 3 students’ Endangered animals: beyond the rainforest Guided Inquiry material of 2011).
I had only just bought a Photo Peach subscription for my own material, but had not yet downloaded anything to my hard drive (which is the main reason for purchasing a subscription). “Endangered animals” was not included in the subscription, being on a separate, free, user account, so it’s been quite traumatic facing this loss. It seems that viewer comments (and most of our lists of Creative Commons photographers, whose Flickr pics were used) are safely preserved on the now-skeletal slideshows, so I am even able to restore these. Very time consuming, but hopefully worth it, since I use – and revisit with students – this material often, including at professional development presentations with teachers.
With Chinese New Year approaching, I’ve just recreated Dragon parade! and it’s now newly located at:
photopeach.com/album/13c5mli.
Dragon parade!
Penrith PS mural is also restored at:
photopeach.com/album/mcj05a.
Penrith PS mural
I shall keep you posted as other popular slideshows get restored.