Please read!

Spring Break is a perfect opportunity to read. If you are staying in town, the weather is far from perfect. How about reading when you can't play outside?

If you are travelling, read on the way. Take turns. Older kids can read to everyone else in the car. It is a great way to make the plane ride go by faster.

It is particularly important for children to see Dad reading. I have had many boys who don't think reading is important because they have never seen their father reading.

Reference BOOKS

Until the internet gets a lot more organized and user friendly, people looking for information, especially children, will need to look for information in books a good deal of the time. The internet has almost everything. That is the problem. Young students do not have the experience or the wisdom to discern what information is likely be accurate or, more importantly, appropriate. Therefore, we have been practicing getting information from traditional reference materials. The skills of locating information, reading, digesting what has been read, and choosing appropriate information will be necessary even when using the internet, at least until they get a wire to tape on your forehead and just transfer the information into your brain.

Third graders have been working on the arrangement of materials in the library. They will be working on using guide words.
Fourth graders have been practicing with encyclopedia articles, dictionaries, and atlases.
Fifth graders have been using almanacs. They are filled with information. The trick is finding what you want to know. Practice with almanacs develops skills for using many other resources.