The Library Warms Up in the Cold

November-December 2021

Since the end of Play Ball! in late October, the 4th and 5th grade have settled into a library routine of a picture book read-aloud followed by plenty of time to explore the shelves and find those next good books.

Four books can be checked out and returned or renewed each week.

Fourth grade delved into the mysterious work of author/illustrator Chris Van Allsburg and both grades learned interesting background information about Thanksgiving. Thank You, Sarah, the story of one woman's activism that brought about the national holiday and Balloons Over Broadway, the history of the puppeteer who is responsible for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade provided fun historical context for our family feasts.

Fifth grade also discussed the primary source material behind the fictional Hanukkah at

Valley Forge. The library's ever-expanding graphic novel collection now has pride of place in the central shelves formerly housing the baseball books, and that is the first place the 4th and 5th graders head after storytime.

Visitors such as Alistair Chang from the DC Board of Education came to see why the scholars gain such value from their Library. He wants to keep the funding going for public school libraries and he gained fodder for his argument at the BWS Library.

Festivals of Light for Grades K-3

From Halloween onward, we traveled the Northern Hemisphere of the Earth noting the various holidays and festivals popping until January 1. Over 4 continents north of the

equator, the diminished light caused folks to gather together, feast together and share the light of candles and fire and very bright colors. We touched marigolds and lit the diya candles of Divali in India and colored skull pictures for Dias De Los Muertos.

We floated candles on leaves to send our problems away with the river for Loy Krathong in Thailand and learned of how a kind Bishop from Turkey tossed coins to children in need for Sinterklaas in The Netherlands or St. Nicolas Day. We learned from Father Sheppard that each Advent candle has particular meaning, as do the 8 candles of

Hanukkah and the 7 candles of Kwanzaa. These rituals give meaning and purpose to our lives and strengthen community. The scholars heard many stories read aloud and can compare and contrast each festival. Such a joy to share!

The first Advent candle lights our way toward hope while the next candles lead us to faith, joy and peace.

Surrounding the Winter Break, we had Library time virtually as Responsive Distance Learning occurred due to Covid protocols. Well, we have done this before and we managed to introduceKwanzaa through Zoom by lighting the red candles on hand, gathering the winter harvest fruits and veggies, laying out the Kinara on a woven mat and hearing stories about the Seven Principles that build character and fellowship within the African American community. Our final Festival of Light.

The 1st Grade checked out books to take home for the first time in this second term of school. We have a vast collection of Picture books and a growing collection of Early Readers and Nature books for them to choose from. Heather Clessuras and Sandi Hannibal constructed books that align with their Reading Program of leveling up the complexity of phonics and sight words. In this way the young readers can hold in their hands the same booklet that they see on a screen.

Kindergarten checked out a crate of Classic Stories so that their teacher could easily show them the parts of a story: Character development, Setting and the Arc of a story to its conclusion. Never underestimate what those young minds can absorb.

On December 1st we celebrated the beginning of Advent, the anticipation of the birth of Jesus Christ. Bishop Mariann Budde and our new Chaplain Father Sheppard were joined by the 5th grade scholars in the Chapel space within the Library. Afterward, Bishop Budde had a nice long chat with the scholars.

She spoke of leadership and compassion. And she asked questions. She demonstrated her interest in how their lives were going during this pandemic. The blessing she gave strengthened us all for the challenges and the adventures ahead.

BWS Library Opens its Doors!

September-October 2021

This year we have Library classes 5 days a week. That means our volunteers are more spread out and pitch in with reading aloud each week. The scholars returned to school so ready to read!

This year began with an introduction of the over 60 new science books given to our Library. Ann Wang truly updated a popular section of our Library-the 500’s or Natural Science. Young people can be scientists by using their eyes and ears to observe change in nature all around. We explored the changes to the trees with What John Marco Saw and Little Tree, among other titles. The difference between fact books and storybooks became clear with National Geographic selections.

Let’s Play Ball!

After 18 months of absence, we wanted to reintroduce the library collection to our scholars. New books had been added, old ones weeded out and shelves rearranged. Could we make these books fly off the shelves? We needed a reading incentive game and Barbara Ochmanek devised a clever way of combining game strategy with exposure to the historic tales of The Negro Leaguesand players like Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Satchel Paige and Mamie “Peanut” Johnson. Grades 2-5 competed under the banners of old team names. Each book read delivered a hit for the team. MVP awards went to biggest hitters and Team Player sportsmanship awards went to those who prevented errors for their team by tidying up. Each day equaled an inning and each reader’s progress posted until the Team won in the 9th.

The range of baseball biographies came from our collection, purchased new or collected

from the DC Public Library. We had a wide variety to offer our scholars. They now know as much about Satchel Paige and Peanut Johnson as they do about Jackie Robinson.

BOOKS FLEW OFF THE SHELVES! MVP’s AWARDED!

Here are the STATS:

TOTAL BOOKS READ OVER 6 WEEKS = 511 !!!

• 3rd grader Akin read the most baseball books-16.

• 4th grader Toluwani, our 3 time MVP, was Champion Reader of The Games with 32 books read leading to 24 runs for the KC Monarchs.

• All 4 grades had players on the All Star Team, scoring at least 22 each.

• Our books checked out went from 44 Week One to a high of 209 books checked out by students and staff in Week Four. Graphic Novels, Wimpy Kids, Dragon Master series and leveled books on Super Heroes=big hits.

All this fuss about Play Ball for grades 2-5 did not interfere with a lively program for those boys who are just learning to read and appreciate good stories in Kindergarten and 1st grade.

Our newest volunteer and dear friend of the BWS Village, Sandi Hannibal, offered a challenge to our 1st graders: compare and contrast the old favorite Caps for Sale with the Ghanaian version The Hat Seller and the Monkeys.

For one class, Susan read a story into the Zoom screen so that a class that was in Distance Learning could still get the library experience.

For Early Primary we always check in early with the masters such as Eric Carle, Maurice Sendak and Mo Willems to ensure that our scholars have a baseline of fanciful and humorous tales. Each week the two classes took crates of books aimed at their levels of interest and pre-reading skills back to their classrooms.

The Library also supported teachers with their social studies curriculum this fall. We

delivered crates of books to various classes for read-alouds or research. From Kindergarten weather and home/shelter studies to 1st grade families and identity to 3rd grade Eastern Hemisphere country and culture studies, we filled boxes and boxes with new and pertinent books from our recently refined collection.

Dragons, monsters and things that go bump in the night led us to the first of our Festivals of Light-Halloween. Heather brought the drama by reading this ghost story to 2nd grade.

On a final note, we awarded Barbara Ochmanek an original Louisville Slugger baseball bat in gratitude for her daily (and weekend) efforts to create the Play Ball game, recording

reading hits of each scholar daily for 6 weeks. Her enthusiasm and dedication knocked it out of the park!

Kings Travel the World

After many hands made light work of it, we gathered together all the materials for the March-April Kings Kits. Thanks to the generosity of St. John’s Church Lafayette Square, each BWS scholar got a brand new, latest edition National Geographic Atlas to keep at home. And thanks to the generosity of one particular donor, Ann Wang, the Library organized a Travel Kit full of books, customized notebooks, an animal shaped sleep mask for plane travel and lots of arts and crafts materials to create souvenirs. We planned on using our imagination to travel through the Atlas and visit the marvels of the World.

The scholars first learned how to use a reference book. There are so many components that make the dense text and large size of the book much more accessible. The photos draw you in, so look at the captions for more info. The maps look complicated, so zoom in on the key to know what type of map it is and what each symbol shows you.

Of course, The First Big Book of the World dispenses with the intro quickly and gets to the continents. K-2 has spent one week per continent. With Europe, we focused on the many forests and then heard the music of Peter and the Wolf.

The older students needed a careful walk through the front and back pages of their World Atlas. Skills like reading a map, identifying location by coordinates, focusing in on the key and following statistics help us compare different regions. They learned that the Earth is constantly moving. From its daily rotation and yearly orbit around the sun, the scholars saw photos and maps of the moving plates of land that lead to earthquakes and volcanoes. Man’s imprint on the Earth is clear in this advanced Atlas. Deforestation and Endangered Species were topics that interested the boys most.

We continued in our virtual Library form but 3 out of 4 classes were zoomed from the actual Library each week. It is still a vibrant space with new books arriving each month. Here is the Early Primary area with the newest Coretta Scott King winner for best illustrations: R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Carole Boston Weatherford wrote and Frank Morrison illustrated the biography of Aretha Franklin.

We lingered over Asia, which is the largest continent and has the most people. Then we zeroed in on Japan to really feel what it’s like to study another culture, cuisine, religion and language. For the youngest, we drew the comparison with American culture by giving our boys beginner chopsticks that have a rubbery Teddy Bears at the top holding the sticks together. The travel kit also had a sushi eraser for practice. We read several lively folktales from Japan such as Momotaro-Peach Boy and The Samurai Cat. Origami paper for 3-5.

The whole school was given a wooden-framed white paper fan to decorate with pink cherry blossoms or Sakura. We read about the friendship Washington DC has with Tokyo and the special gift they gave our city-thousands of highly prized cherry trees. The boys were to give their flowered fan to someone they love.