Oh, to work in a school where cake is allowed! Our healthy initiatives
here in CT are making any type of food rewards a challenge. We have been
calling it the "no cupcake rule"
Students can no longer bring in birthday snacks unless it is something
like cheese and crackers or a fruit or veggie platter. This is much more
of an expense for families on a tight budget than a box of cakemix and a
can of frosting.
Judy Beahan, LMS
Griswold Elementary School
303 Slater Avenue
Griswold, CT 06351
jbeahan@griswold.k12.ct.us
"At the moment that we persuade a child, any child, to cross that
threshold, that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives
forever, for the better." Barack Obama
>>> "Tony L. Pope" <Pope1966@AOL.COM> 3/2/2007 7:43 PM >>>
Well, with a day at work beginning at 6:30am...I happily say that our
Seuss
Celebration 2007 was a huge success. I look forward to an evening of
peace and
quiet and not working on anything Seuss-related! Ha...
This morning we did a live broadcast from the lunchroom and did morning
announcements and showed our birthday cakes to the entire school. A
local grocery
store made two large sheet chakes and we were able to feed all 330
students a
slice of cake about 1"x1"...and had about 30 pieces left over. One
cake said
"Happy Birthday Dr. Suess" (yes...they spelled Seuss wrong) and the
other said
"Happy Birthday Cat-n-Hat" (yes...they spelled it that way too). For
our 80
plus staff members, one of our parents made us a three tiered birthday
cake
with white icing and red trip and stars on top. We used Cat in the Hat
Christmas ornaments for toppers. Of course nothing can be
perfect...shortly before we
started to broadcast we discovered that this new system that had been
installed allowing us to broadcast live DID NOT work throughout the
entire school.
One wing received no reception and several classes in the other wing
didn't
either. I had to do some quick troubleshooting to see if the channels
were
programmed in...only to find out that it's a problem with the new
system. I at
least taped it and will show it over our closed-circuit Monday.
I had one parent volunteer (needed about 3-4 more) and my aide and
myself
swapped out helping cut the first two cakes with the parent volunteer.
Since we
had so much going on (as we do each year), we had to have classes start
coming
in and getting their cake slices beginning around 9:15am. We cut the
tiered
cake last and had staff come back for their pieces...which everyone
enjoyed.
The parent did a fantastic job in making the cakes. I used fishing
line to
try and cut the sheet cakes more quickly and more evenly...from
previous
experience cutting with knives would pull of huge globs of icing. We
finished
serving cakes (with some left over) and cleaned up just as kids were
coming in for
lunch at 11am.
I ate lunch a little earlier at 11:30 am and then started getting our
gym set
up for our afternoon event. This event included having several
students from
a nearby private school who came and read "The Cat in the Hat" along
with me.
I would read a page in English and they would alternate and read
various
pages in their assigned language. They read in Italian, French, Latin,
Spanish
and German. The kids clapped each time they read a page in their
language.
I created a Powerpoint show that played as students and staff came in
and it
showed pictures we took from Monday - Thursday. I also had another
Powerpoint
that I used as we read "The Cat in the Hat." This program I had put
icons on
the pages of the CITH that were read in different languages. When we
got to
a page read in Italian I had a Pizza graphic show on the screen, French
was an
Eiffel Towe, Latin was a bright green L, Spanish was a little boy in a
sombrero, and German was an Einstein cartoon graphic.
The reading-around-the-world segment took about 20 minutes. At 1:40 we
did
our drawings for the winners of some Seuss books and Seuss stickers and
a Seuss
pop-up book. Each time students and teachers got a question right in
our
trivia contest this week they got to put their name in for the drawing.
FYI...our hardest trivia question for teachers required them to listen
to me last week
go through Karen DeFrank's slideshow or to come and look through all
our
Seuss book. I e-mailed teacher/staff trivia questions for the day late
during the
afternoon before. The last trivia question was on Thursday and I had
asked
them: In what Dr. Seuss book can we find a character named John
Raymond. It
drove them crazy! The answer is "Juevos Verdes Con Jamon" or "Green
Eggs &
Ham" in Spanish. In my talk last week I pointed out the difference
between the
English version and the Spanish version. To make the story rhyme in
Spanish,
the character Sam-I-Am had his name changed to Juan Ramon...John
Raymond! (At
least I hope that was John Ramond!!!).
Next we called all homeroom teachers forward (they didn't have a clue
why and
had been driving us crazy all week to tell them why). Then I showed my
last
slide and told them that every student in our school was getting a
hardbound
copy of the 50th birthday edition of "The Cat in the Hat." Yes, we
gave out
exactly 330 copies! If you haven't seen the 50th birthday edition they
have a
metalic blue cover and there is a card inside that can be mailed in as
a
birthday greeting for the CITH.
My aide and I had kept the A-V room locked up all week (another thing
many
teachers noticed) and moved them up in the afternoon on a large A-V
cart covered
with sheets. We had sorted the books on Thursday and placed in bags
with the
name of the teacher and the number of books in the bag. We told them
that an
anonymous benefactor had purchased the books. I had printed a label
and
placed in each book telling what the book was for and the date and our
school
name. The kids went wild and the teachers had a look of relief and
excitement...they had been afraid I was going to get them to DO
something hard. Teachers
gave out all the books to the students in the gym and then we had the
kids hold
up their copy of TCITH and took pix. It looked awesome seeing hundreds
of
kids holding up their copy of the CITH.
Our local newspaper was there and pix of the event will be in the
"Young
Romans" section of the newspaper on Tuesday. This is a section of
paper geared
toward school news. I hope they include at least one of all the kids
holding
their books.
I don't think we will be able to top this...and don't know that I'll
have the
energy next year...ha... At least I'll be two years away from
retirement
before the Cat reaches his 60th birthday! Ha....
Tony Pope
Library Media Specialist
McHenry Primary School
100 McHenry Dr.
Rome, GA 30161
Pope1966@aol.com
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