Our Week

First up, let's start with a STEM activity I somehow missed sharing last month.  

I told the middle schoolers if they could read silently for 12 minutes, they could have candy.  

I gave each table a plateful of gummy pumpkins and a pile of toothpicks and told them to create a structure.  

It was fun to watch them collaborate.  

In fact, it went so well that I did it again with the high school students.  

It was an easy, low prep activity that went over well with everyone.  

Jack's table did the pyramid.

I found this book interesting.  I ended up reading it in the middle of processing a batch of new books.  Travel at sea, interesting recipes (including dog and turtle), and a glimpse of history.  

We also participated in Read for the Record.  This was a cute story.  I added the author's other Amy Wu books to our library wish list.  

I fired up the laminator to do a mini display for Veterans Day.

Really, Fiona?  

And the finished seals of all our military branches.

It's a little blury, but Hannah and Jack are both on the field for the last MS/HS flag football game.

The instant their final game was over, Katie bounded up and asked if she could play basketball.  

While I had the laminator running anyway, I threw in some bookmarks.  I didn't want to waste all the extra laminating pouch that doing just the seals would leave behind, so I did a bookmark with each seal.  These bookmarks were cut from a map book that Paul was done with.  

I finally processed enough buckets to have room for another bookcase, so I brought in this little one.  I've been using it to display new books.  

Now the whole wall is bookcases.  Also, the orange strand on the board is Thankful Turkeys by our middle schoolers.  

I had an ornament idea.  I'm doing an example to work the kinks out.  

Miss Hannah, wearing pumpkins and sunflowers, standing in front of a display of pumpkins and sunflowers.  

I just love the autumn leaves.  It's the one time of year that makes me wish that I could paint.  The leaves are so beautiful.  I stopped and took this picture after dropping Jack off at a friend's house.