Information Overload!

I have been on spring break this week and since we did not travel anywhere, I have spent a LOT of time looking around at all the great blogs I have recently discovered! I feel like I have found a treasure! There are SO many blogs that post exactly the type of information and ideas that I am looking for! In fact, as I sit here writing this, I have 21 tabs open across the top of my browser - each one a different blog or link from a blog that I just can't close until I take one more look! If you're wondering which ones I'm looking at, just take a look at the list on the right-hand side of the page - those are some I have discovered, so far. Anyway, while I am so excited to have all of these new resources (and am so grateful to all these bloggers who take the time to share their great ideas), I am also falling prey to "information overload"! When I see what all these folks are doing it just makes me want to try it all! Yesterday I just had to "walk away from the laptop" to gather my thoughts about all this. So, I've told myself that I just need to focus on one idea/week/day at a time and not try to take on too much all at once. There. Now that that's said, here's what we'll be doing the week after spring break.

We've spent a lot of time this year enjoying the Georgia Picture Storybook nominees in the library. In the spirit of "Battle of the Books", I've made a Smart Notebook file with questions about the books. Each class will have a "battle" to review all of the books before we vote. I've done this with one class already and they had a really good time with it. It should be a fun week!

After that, our focus will be poetry for the remainder of April. I've planned 2 week projects with each grade level - kindergarten will be making their own "terse vese" after we read One Sun: A Book of Terse Verse by Bruce McMillan. First graders will take a look at some bio-poems online then write/illustrate one of their own, and 2nd grade will do a photo/poetry project based on The Best Part of Me by M.Tingley & Wendy Ewald (did this one last year and LOVED the result). As we do all of this, I hope to incorporate some of the awesome poetry center ideas that I've found on my new, favorite blogs! Thanks for reading ! ~D