Many Faces, One Community: A Collaborative Mural For Dot Day!

                

I love dreaming up new ways that our community can connect. 

When I saw this idea for creating a community mural of our faces, I knew we had to do this at our school to kick off the year. 

Like in this video, I wanted to create a big mural for all of our students and teachers to have a place to share a tiny self portrait of themselves...a place to make their mark. 

I created a giant mural in Canva.  I made it 36 x 75 inches.  I will print three of them to have room for all of our students and teachers.  

I made one that said, Many Faces, One Community.  Every Students. Every Story, Every Voice Matters.

And one for International Dot Day, which is coming up on September 15th.

You will find the Canva template here where you can use or make a copy to adjust for you and your community. 

"Our Special Days Slides for September 2026" Are Here!

This year, we are doing a lot of fun new things in our new library and Makerspace. 

The kids are loving Our Special Days Slides that are part of our daily slides we have up on our interactive board each day. 

We have a lot of amazing new tools in our Makerspace and library, and one of my favorites is our very first interactive board!  We have the BenQ Board Pro RP05 in our space and I am having so much fun learning how to use it in our space.  I can't wait to use it with classes, in collaboration, and even for teacher and family events. 

I am creating the fun and interactive daily slides in Canva to display on the board. 

I am excited to share Our Special Days Slides 2026-26 with everyone this year. 

In Canva, I created a template that was easy to copy and fill in for each day. 

I am finding something special to commemorate or celebrate every day.  Then I just change the calendar and search for an image to complete each day.  These are a few from September. 

It is really fun finding these special days and images to go with them as I create the slides. 

So far, I have the slides through October 

You will find the link to this Canva template here.  Feel free to make a copy and use with your interactive board too. 

You can also print the slides and hang them in your library too. 

On my BenQ board, it is easy to use autoplay in Canva to share the slides. 

Just click on Present. Find the three little dots in the right hand corner. Click on Start autoplay and it will play and loop. 

I know our students will love our new daily slides and learning something fun everyday. 

The September Activity Calendars From Our Friends At Demco Are Here!

 

The September Activity Calendars from our friends at Demco are here!  There are such a wonderful resource for our library, teachers, and families each month. 

You can find the Early Literacy Activity Calendar here.

Fall into stories, science, and discovery. This month’s calendar brings September to life with cozy read-alouds, pinecone weather experiments, autumn scavenger hunts, rhyming games, and playful ways to celebrate Literacy Month, Read a Book Day, and the changing season.

And you can find the Children's Activity Calendar here. 

Celebrate a new season of reading, learning, and creativity! September is full of opportunities to connect kids with books and activities, from Library Card Sign-up Month and Read a Book Day to International Literacy Day, Grandparents Day, International Dot Day, Hispanic Heritage Month, and more. Plus, discover brand-new books releasing throughout September.

You can go to Demco's Ideas & Inspiration to find all of the Activity Calendars for the year, and lots of others great things from Demco here.