Guess Who's Home?

It's Eli!  Eli's stationed in Japan, and flying through Narita he spotted a familiar logo.  

A funny (okay, not really) thing happened on his way home.  He ended up stranded in Dallas for three days.  I was so seriously upset with the airline.  But... 

Since big brother Zach is just a couple hours away, he picked Eli up from the airport and took him to a real home, where he could shower and sleep in a familiar bed.  

It was nice that the boys got a chance to see each other, even if none of us planned it.  

Can I just say, "Eeeewww!"?  Used books can be so yucky.  Little alcohol wipes take off the sticky dirt well.  

If you haven't entered my movie giveaway, please take a moment to check it out.  

On the right, my precariously perched iPad, during my ESL tutoring session.  On the left, the cat who ignores me until I'm talking to my student, and then walks through our meeting.  Grumman and Fiona also had a cat fight during class this week.  Oh Grumman.

I fired up my laminator!  I always feel more like a "real" educator when I use the fancy tools.  I wish I'd had it when my big kids were little.  I would have gotten a lot more use out of it back then.  

I used colored cardstock to make shelf place holders.  The idea is, when a kid takes a book off the shelf, they slide their place holder into that spot, so if they decide after looking at it that they don't want to check it out, they can put it back where it came from.  Apparently this is A Thing in school libraries.  We'll see how it goes.  

While I was at it, I laminated some free bookmarks I'd printed.  There's some safari animal ones that go with my Wild About Books theme, too, but I guess I didn't get a picture of those.  

You know you're getting old when you take a picture of where you parked so you don't lose your car when you go into the airport.

And there!  At long last!  Is my boy!  (black mask, waving)  

Small pickup from the library.  Hannah's been bringing a lot of books home from the school library lately.

My finished first bulletin board.  

The titles are somewhat difficult to read against the print, but *I* found them amusing, and that's what counts.  I used pages from a falling apart copy of Heidi for these.  Stay tuned for many more recycled book crafts, as I have lots of falling apart books.  

Friday's pictures.  My circulation desk.  I'll probably post The Rules on the yellow board.  I brought in the pink bookcase from home.  It is off limits to the students, housing the book hospital, in processing, supplies, etc.  The blue bookcase has August events theme books on the top and first shelf, and early chapter books on the third shelf for the moment.  (ECB will probably move over by the readers soon.)

Here's the abyss.  Most of these have not yet been entered into the system.  I currently have 2,959 books entered, and 2,464 of those have been fully processed and shelved.  I'm guessing there's about 800 un-entered books at this point.  

I added the buckets for the readers (from Lakeshore Learning) this week.  The level 1 and 2 are almost full; the level 4 and level 5 buckets are almost empty.  I have readers on my library wish list, so I'm hoping parents will pitch in and help out with some of those.  

I won't bore you with new pictures of the fiction and non fiction sections this week.  They haven't changed much.  

Katie's octopus from a project book.

And her clock.

Hannah's lion

Fiona and Grumman are still not taking to one another.  Fiona is small but fierce, and Grumman is a big fraidy cat.  I wish it were going better.  

Some of the old books at the school had cards & pockets from a bygone era.  I've been removing the cards as I run across them and have acquired about a 2" pile now.  The girls caught me in the school room, painting some of them.  "What are you doing?"  "I'm working on Christmas."  

"You're what??"  

I have a plan for a bulletin board display for December using the cards.  Actually, I've got my Oct/Nov. bulletin board plan fairly nailed down, too.  I haven't Crikey-ed up the words yet, but I bought the supplies.  

Two more empty bookcases this week!  Unfortunately, as the school library looks better and better, my school room at home looks worse and worse.  I've discovered I am not a fan of mylar book covers, so the books with dust jackets sit in piles, waiting for me to suck it up and cover them.  And while I've gotten rid of about 600 of our personal books, there's still a lot of STUFF in the school room.  Art supplies.  Finished art projects.  Old calendars and lesson plan books recording our homeschool days.  Science project supplies.  Educational CDs, DVDs, and CD ROMs.  Toys & games.  Random bits of flotsam and jetsam.  I'd like to think it will get better when school starts, and I have time to work on it without interruptions, but I'm not sure that's the problem.  

Excuse the messy sewing room and focus on the fact that there's a cat on the ceiling.  Fiona goes places that Grumman has never gone.  

Eli brought me a present from Japan.  I've hit the age of hot flashes power surges, so I carry a fan in my purse.  

I tried out the chopsticks on popcorn a couple nights ago.  (This was actually how I learned to use chopsticks as a teen:  mess free buttery popcorn.)

Those are Josiah's feet.  I got Fiona a comb, and Grumman had to have a sniff, of course.  He thinks it's a toothbrush and bites the heck out of it.  

I don't know if I mentioned it, but Hannah has started up piano lessons at the school.  The girls were getting lessons at Shriners until the pandemic, and they continued to practice.  Katie decided she doesn't want to play any more, so I cut down her daily practice time, but Hannah has been great about playing 25 minutes every day.  There's a piano teacher that comes to the school, so I talked to her about taking on Hannah, and it's been going well.  We're already there anyway, so it's super convenient.