Library News!

Hello Eagles.  I hope your fall semester was wonderful!  I had a great fall- Mrs. Vetter joined Team Library in September, and then we had our Reading Oasis Book Fair.  We had record breaking profits, and earned almost $1,400!  It was a big week for me- I was about ready to have a baby (you can probably tell that from the photo!)

Sure enough, shortly after, Harper Belle was born! I had a wonderful time at home with her and was so happy to know my library was in good hands with Mrs. Vetter.  It's not easy to go to work every day without her, but I love my job, and coming back to the students and staff I missed so much made it much easier.

I am now back in the library and hit the ground running.  Already we have finished our Texas Bluebonnet Award voting, and had a fun voting party on January 31st for 125 3rd-5th graders.  That's almost every student in the 3rd, 4th and 5th grades participating! At our school, the winner was Wonder by RJ Palacio.  The statewide winner will be announced next Wednesday!

Earlier this week, 50 lucky Forest North readers, chosen from a random drawing, got to go to the brand new Round Rock Sports Center to hear R.J. Palacio, the author of Wonder, speak to us. What fun to have a library sponsored field trip & a great culmination of our yearlong initiative for this amazing book. It was a wonderful experience that reminded us all why we need to "choose kind," as the book teaches, and a great start to "Choose Kind" week here at FNE.

To kick off our Kindness Week, everyone on campus started this week by wearing blue - just like our special book Wonder.  Yesterday, we wore our pajamas as we dreamed of friendship, and today, everyone is wearing the same outfit as a friend for Twin Day!  I am dressed to match Mrs. Lajaunie!

I am currently in the middle of lots of projects, as always! The Armadillo Readers Choice Voting Parties with Kindergarten, 1st grade and 2nd grade are underway, the 2nd grade Rainbow Reading Challenge finale party is on 2/21, and I am starting book clubs with many grade levels. The VIP Bluebonnet breakfast, for students who read 10+ books in 3rd grade, or 15+ books in 14th or 5th grade, is on 2/21. The FNE Battle of the Bluebonnets is 2/25, and our RRISD Battle (where we will hopefully bring the traveling trophy back home!) is 3/20.

Many classes are coming in daily to get lessons - today I've already taught about coins to Kindergarten, homophones to third grade, technology then & now to 2nd grade (I love showing them old phones & computers!) and the Itsy Bitsy Spider to PreK.  Just another day in the library.  Thanks for welcoming me back with open arms, Eagles!  I missed you!

New Library Assistant: Elizabeth Vetter

It is with great excitement that I introduce Forest North's new Library Assistant Elizabeth Vetter! She will be working in the library helping Mrs. Fournier with student checkout, processing new books to get them catalogued into our online system, running the Birthday Book club, helping with our financial records, running fun exciting programs like Armadillo Readers Choice Award (K-2nd) and the Texas Bluebonnet Award (3rd-5th) and a ton of other tasks we do to keep the library fun and running smoothly! She'll be working Monday, Wednesday & Friday afternoons, and Tuesday and Thursdays mornings to maximize flexibility for our students and teachers. I'm so excited she's here and we can start flexible daily checkout for our students! It's been a hectic year starting without an assistant, and she is just starting this week, so please welcome her to Forest North, and bear with us as we do a lot of on-the-spot job training! So glad you're here, Mrs. Vetter!

Welcome back to school, Eagles! 2013-2014 = Best Year Yet!

VOTE AND WIN!

Tomorrow starts the voting period for the Follett Challenge! Please vote for FOREST NORTH: THE MOVIE once daily. Mrs. Fournier and Fournier's Friends will be organizing our efforts to vote on every single computer in our school once a day, but we need everyone to vote on their home computers as well!

Bookmark our FOREST NORTH: THE MOVIE homepage (http://smore.com/2cgk) with a convenient voting link to make it easy for you:

The voting has a huge reward- the votes, combined with the grades judges give us on our movie and the essays written by Mrs. Fournier & Ms. Fennewald, can earn us up to $60,000 to spend on our library and technology for classrooms! We would like to start an eBook collection, buy some playaways for students to checkout (they're like an iPod with one book already downloaded on it- so fun!), and buy many more books on .mp3 and even refresh our collection with old fashioned paper books, too! $60,000 can stretch a looooong way, so we're open for suggestions on other forms of technology we can buy for the classrooms too!

Forest North: The Movie! Filming 12/19

Bluebonnet Fun Night: Postcards From Camp

Thursday will mark our third BLUEBONNET FUN NIGHT this fall. We've already celebrated Under the Mambo Moon at Sommer in September, and Play, Louis, Play! at Jollyville in October. Tomorrow night, we will celebrate Postcards from Camp at the brand new England Elementary. We've been advertising this event on our morning announcements with a British accent in honor of England Elementary... and also because our anchor Jack just loves to speak with a British accent.

Postcards from Camp: a Postal Story, by Simms Taback, is an awesome interactive tale between a boy and his father. Michael isn't so sure about summer camp, but his dad keeps insisting he'll have fun. Will Michael start to like it? Either way, he and his dad send the coolest letters and postcards back and forth.

Simms Taback, winner of the Caldecott Award, even includes real envelopes for taking the letters in and out, and Michael even writes one scary campfire tale that's in an envelope. The scary book is my favorite part- it has an owl on the cover.

From Forest North, on Broadmeade Avenue, turn right onto the 45 frontage road for 1 mile. Turn left on Parmer. After 1.7 miles, take a right on Avery Ranch Road. After 1.5 miles, you'll turn right onto Pearson Ranch Road. England is at 8801 Pearson Ranch Road.

We'll meet at jolly old England Elementary in the Cafeteria at 6:00. I would recommend to park in the back for the quickest walk to the Cafeteria, which is also in the back of the school. England students will read this wonderful book to us, we'll learn some fun campfire songs, and eat delicious s'mores, the classic campfire treat!

All Forest North 3rd-5th graders who attend this event will receive 2 genuine Fournier bucks, which are pretend money with Mrs. Fournier's face on it. Each buck is worth one extra checkout! Check in with Mrs. Fournier at England to redeem your Fournier bucks!
See you there, Eagles!

Barnes & Noble Book Fair 12/1/12 10AM-10PM

If you haven't heard the news, the place to be this Saturday is our local Barnes & Noble! We're having our 2nd annual Book Fair on 12/1, from 10AM-10PM. Our Barnes & Noble is located right near Lakeline Mall at the Homestead Shopping Center. The address is 14010 U.S. 183, Austin, TX 78717.

Students are invited to shop with their families, because Barnes & Noble has agreed to donate 25% of all sales from FNE supporters back to our school. Last year we made over $3100 in the 12 hours we were there, which was three times as much as usually make with a book fair in the library, where we have to shut the library down for a week, make our own decorations, and cancel all lessons and checkout for 5 days.

Purchases made in the cafe (like the special Forest North vanilla coffee-free frappuccino, colored red or blue special for our Eagles!), holiday cheesecakes pre-ordered, books, Nooks and any other merchandise will apply towards our total. Every little bit helps!

We've got hours of fun entertainment planned for Eagles and their families. The key to our success last time was the involvement of our faculty, staff, students and their families. Here's our schedule of events:

10:00-10:00 Art Gallery featuring PreK-5th Student Work
10:00-10:00 Free Faculty Gift Wrap - get your teacher to wrap your holiday gifts!
12:00-1:00 Free Face Painting in the Children's Area
12:30-1:00 Kindergarten Flash Mob to "Ice Cream and Cake"
1:00 -1:30 Cup Stacking Tournament
1:30-2:00 Fourth Grade Poetry Slam
2:00-2:30 Jump “In” Eagles 3rd-5th Jump Rope Team Performance
2:30-3:00 Third Grade Comedy Show
3:00-3:30 Teacher Dog Parade- come pet your teacher's puppy!
3:30-4:00 First Grade Read Alouds
4:00-4:30 Jump “In” Eagles 1st-2nd Jump Rope Team Performance
4:30-5:00 Forest North Choir Sing Multicultural Holiday Music
5:00-5:30 Second Grade Holiday Book Commercials
5:30-6:00 Kindergarten Flash Mob to "Thriller"

Fournier's Friends, our special 3rd-5th student library volunteer crew, will be helping Mrs. Fournier work the front door. We will hold a sign that says "no donations required," and students will be asking patrons whether they're here to support Forest North. If they say "yes," we'll give them a sticker. All customers who are wearing a sticker get 25% of their purchase donated back to the FNE Library! All funds will be used to purchase new library books for our students, so we can all share the fruits of our labor!

Please email Mrs. Fournier if you have any ideas about how to make the Book Fair a success, if you would like to get involved, or if you need more information about the event. It's a great way for our community to have fun, show off our academic and extracurricular successes, and work together towards a common goal.

Thank you so much for your support. Here's hoping we have another successful Barnes & Noble Book Fair. See you on Saturday!