The Library Leaders have been practicing reading well loved stories to share with the 5K students as a story time on Wednesday mornings. Today was our first day. The two groups who prepared for today decided to add puppets to their reading. Thanks for Ms. McMillan who loaned us her puppet theatre. All the Kindergarten students who came today really enjoyed themselves. We had early students from Ms. Amick, Ms, Johnson, Ms. Harris and Ms. Van Horn’s classes attend today. Next Wednesday, we will have early students from Ms. Schrieber, Ms. Duke, Ms. Glatz and Ms. Quave attend.
Meet @ Main this Thursday, April 23
Just a reminder to Meet @ Main (Lexington County Public Library- Main Branch) for some fun activities at 6:00PM and a wonderful production from Pork Chop Productions! The event is free for all GPS scouts! Come on out and enjoy the joys of reading! See you there! Click this link for a flier explaining the event: meet-main-for-district final
Sean Poppy’s visit with second grade!
Sean Poppy, the biologist, from the Savannah River Ecology Lab visited with all second graders today in the Learning Commons. He brought samples of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. He is an education program specialist who uses native animals to introduce children to the wonders of nature. Oohhs and aahhs were heard over and over as he introduced children to the animals. We all learned something! Did you know that to tell if a box turtle is male or female you check the color of their eyes? Below are picture of some of the animals he shared with us.
3 YEAR OLD ALLIGATOR
A look inside the alligator’s mouth. His tongue is attached and he has a flap to close the back of his mouth.
A baby alligator, eight months old.
A snapping turtle!
A grown box turtle and a baby box turtle.
A bull frog! We even heard the sounds different frogs make!
A Horned Owl.
A coyote Mr. Poppy found when he was only a few days old.
One of several snakes he brought. All were helpful snakes that eat rodents.
Blowfish Reading Program begins this week!
It’s that time of year again! Gilbert Primary will participate in the Blowfish reading program again this year. Your child should have brought home a gold flier that explains the Blowfish reading program. Blowie will be visiting GPS to help get kids excited about reading on April 27th! We start this week and the program will run until May 8. The children can read up to 4 books during this time. On the back of the gold flier, is their log sheet for them to record the titles of their books. Please encourage your child to participate in this reading event. Our “game day” is June 25. If students read one book they receive one ticket, two books they receive two tickets, three books they receive a spot in the reading parade before the game, and for four books they receive a free hot dog and coke! This is a great way to show your support for reading and enjoy some time to “sharpen the saw” with your child. The school with the highest percentage of students participating could also receive a check to help purchase more books! We look forward to seeing all our scouts make a home-run!
GPS will also be participating in the public library’s Meet at Main on Thursday, April 23 at 6:00. Porkchop productions will be preforming and there will be fun activities to complete before the production which begins at 6:30. Look for a flier to come home next week with more details!
Second graders win First Place!
Mrs. Stepp’s library leaders worked on creating book trailers for some of the SC picture book award nominees. The SC Association of School Librarians, held a contest allowing schools to send in one book trailer for the competition.
GPS sent in a book trailer made by two second graders, Nora and Ashleigh, using the book Annie and Helen by Deborah Hopkinson. The winners were announced after the Association’s annual conference held in Columbia, March 11-13. We were delighted to hear that Nora and Ashleigh won first prize for the picture book category!
The girls received several treats, including a free book of their choice from the book fair. They were also featured on the school news show and on the district website. The school will also receive a check from the association to apply towards the purchase of more wonderful books!
Book Fair Report – March/April Newsletter
The March/April newsletter has been posted. Please go to the newsletter tab on the right side of the page under pages to see all the newsletters for this year.
The Spring Book Fair was a huge success! We had so much fun tying in the Under the Sea theme with the second grade play! We grew our fair by 10% over last spring so we earned extra scholastic dollars. We ended up with over 1900 scholastic dollars! We also earned over $2700 in cash which we will use for purchasing new titles for the Learning Commons and supplies for the programs in the Learning Commons. We were also able to award a child in each homeroom with a free book.
We want to send a huge thank you to Jennifer Voshell who coordinated several parent volunteers everyday of the book fair. Thanks also to all our wonderful volunteers! We were never short-handed! Thanks to all the children and parents who came in to support our learning commons!
You are the best!!
World Read Aloud Week and Read Across America!
We have had a wonderful week making connections across the US. On Monday, Ms. Quave’s class kicked off the week connecting with Ms. Guardiola’s dual language class from Texas. They shared Are You My Mother in Spanish. We moved on to Ms. Van Horne’s kindergarten class connecting with Ms. Scrimgeour’s class in Vermont where it was 5 degrees and they had 80 inches of snow! They shared the book That is Not a Good Idea! For our last connection on Monday, Ms. Scurry and Aldecoa came in to listen to Ms. Uribe’s 4th grade class in Missouri read to us.
On Tuesday, we started our day with Ms. Scrimgeour’s class and Ms. Dickerson’s class. Ms. Dickerson’s class was in Texas. Ms. Marlowe and Ms. Umbarger’s classes came in to share a book. Ms. Harris’ Kindergarten hooked up with Ms. Sikes from GA and then Ms. Allen’s kindergarteners Skpyed with Ms. Hyman’s fifth graders from VA. To round out a fabulous Tuesday, Ms. Gross’ Kindergarten class connected with Ms Walterich’s class in New York. Our scouts were excited to hear about the weather in different parts of the country and about other schools. Once we Skyped, we used Google Earth to find the schools we had shared with to see where they were on the map and what their community looked like compared to Gilbert.
Wednesday found us connecting with Ms. Amolo’s second grade class in GA. We shared the book Oh No, by Flemming. Ms. Broderick’s 5th graders in Massachusetts, near Boston read to Ms. Davidson’s class. To end our short day, the author Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen connected with Ms Duke and Ms. Pepper’s classes to read her book, Duck, Duck, Moose. She also encouraged the children to write about real events in their lives. She gave them a secret to writing. She said when it seems no one wants to listen to you, to grab a pencil and write because no one can stop your voice when you are writing!
Thursday’s weather across the country canceled two of our Skype sessions as the schools we were to Skype with were closed. We did get to meet Andy Plemmons at Barrow Elementary in Athens, GA. Ms. McCain and Ms. Prouse’s classes shared the book, Same, Same but Different. We then shared things about our school realizing that some things were the same but some were different. We ended our day with Ms. Schreiber’s kindergarten class connecting with Ms. Cook in Missouri. Our schedules did not quite work out so, Ms. Cook did not have a class but she read Waiting is Not Easy with Ms. Stepp. We enjoyed this new book by Mo Willems!
This was a wonderful week. We made lots of new friends all across the country! Sharing books is a wonderful way to spread the joy of reading with our children. Enjoy our pictures and videos below!
Book Fair is Coming!
GPS will hold it’s Spring book fair beginning next Thursday, March 12. The book fair will be open every morning at 7 for students to shop with a parent. We will stay open all day from March 12 till March 20. We will be open till 3 each day. On Thursday, March 12 and Thursday, March 19 we will be open from 3PM till 6PM when the second grade play will begin. We hope you will make plans to attend the book fair! If you are unable to attend in person, you can shop online at scholastic.com/fair beginning March 7 till March 25. Books will be delivered to your child free of charge here at school.
Read Across America and World Read Aloud Week!
Much fun was had today as we began our week long celebration of Read Across America and World Read Aloud! Scouts old and young enjoyed wearing crazy socks! In the Learning Commons, we held three Skype session. Mrs. Van Horne’s class read with a first grade class in Vermont. Mrs. Quave’s Spanish class read with a dual language class in Austin, Texas. Ms. Aldecoa and Ms. Scurry’s classes listened to a fourth grade class read to them from a different school in Austin, Texas. More classes will participate tomorrow as we read across America!! We are using a big US map to mark the states we are reading with for the week. Our Scouts were very pro-active and we were proud of their manners as they interacted with other students. 
Kindergarten Research
Please enjoy these videos of Ms. Johnson’s kindergarten research on penguins! We began with learning about the Super 3 research process and then worked on a group project together. Next we broke into small groups to learn about different penguin families. We will present our final projects to some second grade classes on Thursday.