The Transit of Venus

I had a science teacher approach me, asking if I would do a display on the Transit of Venus which was coming up. I knew nothing about this, but since a teacher had asked me (we’ve been trying to get more teacher/class involvement in what happens around the libray) I couldn’t say no. It was time to put those researching skills, that we’ve been teaching the kids, to the test.

All the hard work paid off as the particular science teacher bought each class he taught into the library to look around, but more importantly to look at the display.

Have any teachers come and asked you to do a particular display? I’m curious…

Titanic 100th anniversary

The Titanic 100th anniversary was a good reason to get all the ships and shipwrecks books off the shelf and into a display. There was allsorts of information from timeline, to short bio’s on significant people during that event, other documents that were published around that time and some cross sections of the Titanic itself.

Tip for future displays… Who says the heading always has to be straight. Why not try putting your heading on a different angle next time you do a display.

Titanic 100th anniversary

Titanic 100th anniversary

Titanic 100th anniversary

 

Quotes around the library

Before we refurbished our library we had some white spaces around the place. Which were the perfect size for some good library quotes. This meant that I had ALOT of letters to cut out. I lost count of how many letters I ended up cutting out. I was just glad to see the end of it. It’ll be awhile till I cut out that many letters in one go again.

I’ve attached the quote templates so you can print them off on whatever kind a paper you like. Happy cutting out!

Templates :  outside-a-dog    knowledge-is-free     if-you-have-a-garden    a-good-library

Library quotes

Library quotes

Library quotes

Library quotes

 

 

BIG things

As we all know kids love BIG things, the bigger they are the better!

So I thought I’d try and create a giant crossword for the kids to do outside the library and… a scrabble board with velcro tiles for inside the library. Both require a bit of fiddling around but if you’re up for a challenge then I recommend making one of these. I’m still using the scrabble board 4 years later and have made quite a few giant crosswords, since the first one was so popular.

Here are the templates that you can print off to make your own Scrabble board. All pages were printed on A4 paper.

scrabble-board – The first page is the outline and to get a board this size you’ll need to print 38 pages of the outline. You will then need to print 16 Double word score tiles, 8 Triple word score tiles, 24 Double letter score tiles and 12 Triple letter tiles.

scrabble-tiles – This template has the correct number of letter tiles so you only need to print this template once.

Scrabble

Big Crossword

 

Sea Week + apology

I’m soooo sorry!

It’s been over two years since I made my last post, which is terrible. But the main reason for this was I lost all my display photos. Without photos a blog looks very empty. Anyway after much fiddling around I managed to get all my display photos back and can now start posting again. YAY! I’ll pick up where I left off…

Sea Week – there are so many ‘weeks’ that one can do in the library. Sometimes the hardest part is deciding which ‘week’ to celebrate. I found a book in my personal collection of ‘display stuff’ which had cool sea/ocean facts and figures. So a pulled apart book with some sea/ocean books from our library collection and some beach things is a display made. (Thank goodness for holidays to the beach to collect things for displays).

Sea Week

Sea Week

Sea Wek

 

Who dunit?

We have many students to love to read mystery/detective stories, so I thought lets put their skills to the test with a ‘Who dunit?’

Based on a similar format to Cluedo or a murder mystery game. Students had to read the clues and work out who, with what and where.

National Simultaneous Storytime 2012

Every year we have Library Information Week (LIW) and on the Wednesday of that week is National Simultaneous Storytime. Over at the junior side of our school they read the book that has been nominated for that year over the PA system. The little kids love it! In 2012 the book chosen was – The very cranky bear, Nick Bland. I love Nick’s illustrations and so I had to do a display, couldn’t help myself. Trying to paint the very cranky bear was a challenge but I’m happy with how it turned out.

Big Bad Read

A few years ago the UK ran a reading program called the Big Bad Read. I stumbled across it too late, for the voting of evil characters, but didn’t see why I couldn’t still do it in our library. So I blew up the logo, which you’ll find a copy of here: http://images.fanpop.com/images/image_uploads/Big-Bad-Read-villains-725772_1454_1920.jpg I can’t remember if they had a list of books and their villains or if I made my own list. We had a list of villains for the students to vote which villain they loved the best. I started the list but left room for them to add any villains that I may have missed. The rest of the display consisted of book covers and pictures of the villain from that book. For some villains I did a little blurb explaining who the villain is and why they were considered a villain.

Banned Book Week

I had no idea such a week existed until I stumbled across it a few years ago. What an excellent way to promote books and get kids talking. Originally the heading was just ‘Banned Books’, but the students were so confused. Even when I changed it to ‘Read Banned Books’ they still asked – Who, What, Why, How and When. I went through the list of banned books (found here: http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/ ) that we have in our collection and then just said why it was banned. That small amount of information was enough to get the students going. I’m keen to do this display again but it always falls in the last week of term and I’m sure you know what the last week of term can be like.

Around the world in 80 days

This is a visual representation of the book ‘Around the world in 80 days’ by Jules Verne.

At each stop you’ll find the flag of that country, facts about the city and photos (old and new) to show you what the place looked like. Then on the world map between each stop I put a symbol to show how they traveled, for example: boat, elephants, trains etc.

A visual representation of Jules Verne’s book

A visual representation of Jules Verne’s book

A visual representation of Jules Verne’s book

A visual representation of Jules Verne’s book

A visual representation of Jules Verne’s book