Look Who Came To Van Meter School Yesterday......Wandoo Planet and The "Banish Boredom" Tour!

We had been waiting for this day!  

The day that Wandoo Planet and our friends from Evanced Solutions came to visit us at Van Meter as part of their "Banish Boredom Tour."  

After meeting Lindsey from Wandoo Planet online, we started connecting our fourth graders as beta-testers of their website.

At the beginning of April we made the announcement to our students, teachers, and school community that Van Meter would be one of the first stops on the Banish Boredom Tour. Everyone has been excited ever since. 

To learn all about how we got involved, please read You Just Have To Check Out "Wandoo Planet"....The World's First Kid-Powered Interest Genome Project. 

For the day, we turned the library into a place for Wandoo Planet to celebrate with our students and teachers. 

                       
They even brought along Winston, who loved meeting everyone.

There were lots of treats like pins, bookmarks....

and lots and lots of popcorn they popped throughout the day. 

                            

There were Wandoo Planet Interest Trees and tons of stickers of things everyone enjoys.  

We just loved seeing what they created to take home. 

My special National Honor Society kids helped out at our event too. It is always great to see this at our school and in the library. 

To make sure everyone was involved in the day, I created a schedule that included classes from 8:30am until 3:20pm.  

Our first group from 8:30-9:00am were all of the fourth graders since they were the ones involved with Lindsey and Wandoo Planet from the start.  Lindsey took them out to see their van which is making the 20,000 mile trek across the country with the team.  

They enjoyed listening to the fourth graders feedback and remarks about Wandoo Planet.  I am so happy they have been part of this experience. 

When all of the other classes came to the library, Lindsey told them all about Wandoo and spoke to them about reading.

Next, all of our kids loved visiting the Wandoo Planet website and signing up to be part of this wonderful reading network too. 

As their website states, 

Their own interest sapling starts to grown into an interest tree with individual branches representing each interest. The branches then start to bud with suggested kid-friendly content that directly relates to users’ interests. As kids read and explore, interest branches grow leaves. Future versions of Wandoo Planet will connect directly to some libraries’ children’s collection holdings.

It was fun seeing what their interests brought them too as they built their trees.  They couldn't wait to go home and continue this fun.

As you can from all of the pictures ahead, we had an AWESOME day!  

A special "Thank You" to Josie and London for helping all of the little ones in the library and for being in charge of photography and our the Van Meter Library Voice Instagram for the day.  

Remember that our kids can also access Wandoo Planet at home.  It will be a SUPER place for them to visit over the summer too.

Thank you to our Wandoo Planet team friends.  You all made such a fun difference at our school during the Banish Boredom Tour.

We are thankful for all of you!  :)