Balloons Over Van Meter.... Created With Google Drawing & A Little Imagination!

One of our favorite books to read and share during Thanksgiving time is...

...Balloons Over Broadway by Melissa Sweet, which is a wonderful picture book that tells the story of Tony Sarg, the puppeteer who inspired the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.  

You can read more about it here on Melissa's website. 

In November, we learned more about the Macy's Day parade by reading the book, visiting the production through virtual reality tours and our MERGE goggles, 

and even created special balloons and attached them to different types of robots in kindergarten and....

 ...second grade.  It was so much fun!

After seeing this tweet from Candace @buchananseaside, I wanted to try it out with our students.  

So, I went to my friend and 2nd grade teacher, Staci Braun, to see if she wanted to give it a try with her students last week before we went on break for the holiday.  And she did! 

First, we took pictures of her students.  

I uploaded each into RemoveBG to... 

...remove the background....

 ...and make it transparent.

After I had all of their images ready,  I open up a Google Drawing for each student and uploaded the image into the blank canvas. 

 With the tools across the top, the 2nd graders created different lines,

shapes, arrows, text and more to create their balloons. 

 

When I finished created a Google Drawing for each student, I put every one into a Google Document that we shared with the students in Seesaw.  

 They just clicked on their link and it open it up in Google Drawing.

 They loved creating their very own balloons that would....

...fly over Broadway in New York City. 

 As our students showed us their awesome....

 ...balloon creations,

 we started to think about a title and description for our project.

Even though it was super cool for them to fly their balloon creations over Broadway, 

it came to us that we should be flying them over Van Meter. 

The Balloons Over Van Meter project turned out so cute.  It was meaningful and fun for the students, which not only let them shine with their creativity, it also gave them a chance to learn a new tool, Google Draw. 

Take a moment to watch this little GIF I created in Creator Studio within Google.  They were very excited to show off their balloons in Balloons Over Van Meter. 

Thank you, Candace for the inspiration and idea.  We loved this project! 

6 Collections By Destiny for the Holidays and New Year!

With this special time of year upon us, it is the perfect time to bring all of the different holidays to our libraries, classrooms and students in unique, engaging and creative ways. 

I want to share six Collections by Destiny I created that will be a wonderful place to go for these resources.  These are all Public Collections so you can use and share them with your students, teachers and families all season long.  

The six Collections for the holidays and New Year include a....

Christmas Collection,

Diwali Collection,

Hanukkah Collection,

Kwanzaa Collection

Chinese New Year Collection

and a New Year’s Collection.

I have included Titlewave Lists in the Collections that will give you fantastic books and other materials that will tie into the holidays and New Year too. You will find them in the Collections.

One of my favorite resources included in these Collections are the Holidays in Rhythm and Rhyme Series from Cantata Learning. I have included the story, song and lesson plans that go along with each one of these wonderful titles. You will find them here too.

I will continue to add to these and please let me know if you'd like to collaborate on any of the Collections or have ideas on what should to be added to them.  

Happy Holidays friends.  I hope you enjoy and celebrate this holiday season.  

Join Us For The Future Ready Librarian® Fireside Chat On December 12th, Friends

On December 12, I will be hosting the last Future Ready Librarian webinar of the year with a very special webinar with three amazing friends. 

I have invited Tom Bober, Kathy Schmidt and Josh Stumpenhorst to share favorite books, authors, technology, trends, ideas, advocacy tips, and other top things that have been happening in the library and within education in 2019. When we examine our framework as Future Ready Librarians, we tie this essential work into the wedges of curation, empowering our students as creators, literacy, equitable digital access and more.

As we get ready for the holiday break, we will also be sharing ways to keep students engaged and learning with resources and ideas to take back to your communities.

Here are a few questions we will ponder:

• What is the “hot” new technology you are using this year with your students in the library?
• What are the books (titles) that you just can’t keep on the shelf?
• What is it that your teachers have been coming to you with this year?
• What do you see as BIG things that are coming?
• What resources and programs do you share with your students as we go into the holiday and a new year? How do you keep connected?

We hope you can join us. You can register for this free webinar here.