We love our Imagination Library books! Especially since they are board books and therefore chew-safe 🙂
If you are a book-lover and have small children at home under the age of five, you should definitely know about this program! Imagination Library was founded by country singer Dolly Parton to promote literacy and an early love of books in children by mailing them a book each month, no matter the income level of the household.
The United Way of Central Minnesota has been taking part in this program, and if you live in the area, here is where you can sign up! (Tip: it does take several weeks until you receive your first book, so don’t procrastinate!) Each child from birth to their fifth birthday will receive a book in the mail each month. The program has become so popular that it has continued into Canada and the U.K.
You can get more information about the program from their website, or keep up with the book selections and other news on their blog. Also, check out CMLE’s previous post about the program when Imagination Library was donating their 1 millionth book!
As you may be starting to appreciate, we like to be festive at CMLE Headquarters. Since Thanksgiving is soon approaching, we decided it was time to hang up the turkeys! (We have decorative turkeys on streamers floating from the ceiling. There’s no good way to photograph them, so stop by or use your imagination!)
We just wanted to share our decorations with you, and perhaps you have some festive November or Thanksgiving themed decorating going on at your library or media center? Send us a picture! For more glimpses of our exciting office happenings (often including Orville the Bear and the Office Plant team) follow us on Instagram.
Angie and I were invited to visit the Avon Elementary School library, where we were in the capable hands of Cathy Studer and Gayle. They showed us around their very nice library, in between helping their young patrons and teachers in technology distress. (A busy library’s work is never done!) Teaching a class in the computer lab behind the library was Dana Dingmann, and swamped with busy kids working on assorted projects. Dana also helps in the library, and works on devices for the school.
looks good enough to eat!
When you walk in the door you immediately see this great display. It changes monthly, and this month they are focused on food and books. This theme carries over to other displays in the library.
important library supplies
Check out the really cute basket of crayons! This food-themed strategy for putting out crayons for patron is on all the work tables in the library. The library is also available for backup for the school’s technology needs. They have a laptop cart with 30 laptops, and iPad cart with 30 devices, and another cart of 30 Chromebooks. Each classroom works on a 2:1 ratio of tech tools – Chromebooks and iPads – to student. Cathy and Gayle are available to work with everyone to be sure the tech is effective in teaching and learning. And there was a copy of a Magic Tree House series book – one of my favorites! Continue reading A Visit to the Avon Elementary School Library→
We all know libraries are fantastic, and good places to spend your time. Just in case you’d like a reminder though, check out this article from the Book Bub blog that features cool photos and quotes about the joy of libraries.
Here’s another article, this time from Buzzfeed, about people appreciating the importance of libraries, and this one even has lovely pictures of famous libraries!
Do you have any quotes from people that have said how much they appreciate your library or media center? Or, do you have a special shout-out to a particular library that is great? Share with us in the comments!
By now, you’ve probably noticed that each week we’ve been sharing a tip from Carson Tate’s book Work Simply on how to streamline your life. Here at CMLE, we found Tate’s book incredibly valuable and thought it would resonate with many of you, too. We hope this has been the case, and that you have found these tips useful in your daily activities!
This post is simply to remind you of the source of that content: Carson Tate’s Work Simply. Before beginning the series, we reached out to her to request her permission to incorporate her content into our posts. We were so pleased when she was willing to do so! It was a great reminder that sometimes taking a chance does pay off.
Have any of the Strategies to Simplify tips we have shared worked particularly well for you? We’d love to hear about it! Leave us a comment or send us an email. We will continue to share tips beginning again next week.
If you missed any of the series so far, catch up now:
