Dinosaurs!

The Dinosaurs Alive exhibit at the Brookfield Zoo is pretty astonishing. It inspired me to decorate both the Prairieview and Elizabeth Ide libraries with dinosuars to begin the school year. Dinosaurs have been popular with our students throughout my career. If you haven't already done so, I encourage you to take your children over to the zoo for a visit. The special exhibit will be there through October. We have lots of books about dinosaurs.

Moving Along

We will begin sharing some of our new titles and some old favorites with our kindergarten and first grade classes this week. This is an important, core activity at the Elizabeth Ide I.M.C. We do our best to encourage reading and it is fun for all of us. The second graders will join in when they have finished learning the basics for searching our catalog (another important skill).







At Prairieview, we have started our basic computer skills unit with the third, fourth, and fifth graders. In order to do almost anything on the computer, they will need to be able to keyboard. All three grades start out with keyboarding. It is important that they have good posture and use the home row position. Our software is designed for them to proceed at their own pace.

New Searchers and Award Introduction

In the next few weeks, the second graders will be introduced to the procedure of searching at our computers to find out what we have available in our collection. This is a skill they will take with them throughout their lives as they use many, many different libraries.





The state of Illinois has awards for authors which are chosen by our school age children. Our third graders have been introduced to the nominees for the Monarch Award. This award is elected by kindergarteners through 3rd graders. The Elizabeth Ide children will hear about it later in the school year, closer to the election time.





The Rebecca Caudill Young Readers Book Award is elected by fourth through eighth graders. The fourth and fifth graders have been introduced to the nominees. The voting for both awards will take place in February.



We ask the children to check these books out at the public library if possible. We do not have the budget to provide more than a few copies of each book.