Our Author Quilt Makes the Local Newspaper

It was a wonderful week. I shared the quilt with our fifth graders who did the project as fourth graders. Hoping to get the quilt hung this week.

http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/

Staff Photo: Jason Braverman Sydney Watkins, a fifth-grade student at Mulberry Elementary, helps fold a quilt that was made with autographs of famous authors. Mulberry Author Quilt Last year, fourth-grade students wrote to 42 children's authors asking them to sign fabric squares that would be sewn into a quilt. Below are the authors whose autographs appear on the decorative blanket. • Judy Blume ("Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing") • Betsy Byars ("The Summer of the Swans") • Dale Christopher, on behalf of his late father Matt Christopher ("The Kid Who Only Hit Homers") • Beverly Cleary ("Beezus and Ramona") • Christopher Paul Curtis ("Bud, Not Buddy") • Kate DiCamillo ("Because of Winn-Dixie") • Tony DiTerlizzi ("The Spiderwick Chronicles") • Russell Freedman ("Lincoln: A Photobiography") • Dan Gutman ("Jackie & Me") • Nancy Krulik ("Katie Kazoo, Switcheroo") • Lois Lowry ("Number the Stars") • Ann M. Martin ("The Baby-sitters Club") • Christopher Paolini ("Eragon") • Barbara Park ("Junie B. Jones") • Dav Pilkey ("The Adventures of Captain Underpants") • Patricia Polacco ("Thank You, Mr. Falker") • Barbara Robinson ("The Best Christmas Pageant Ever") • Louis Sachar ("Holes") • Roland Smith ("Peak") • Jerry Spinelli ("Maniac Magee") • R.L. Stine ("Goosebumps") • Mo Willems ("Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale") • Henry Winkler ("Hank Zipzer")

Final Four

Saturday, was our county-wide reading competition or Reader's Rally. This is the third year that a teacher and I  have brought a team to the competition. Each team  can have no more  than 10 students.  Our students have a list of 20 books to read. The competition is like a quiz-bowl. They buzz-in to answer questions and earn points. This year so many elementary schools in our school district were part of the competition that we competed in divisions. At the end of the day, the top two teams in each division were announced. Imagine our surprise and EXCITEMENT to discover that our students were first in our division. This Friday, we will travel to our district television studio to compete against the other top teams.  This competition will be taped and aired on our GCPS channel. It was a glorious day spent with other readers. A fabulous day spent with the parents and siblings of our team members.  We are still so very excited. The absolute best thing is that our students, faculty, and parents are excited because we won a READING Competition!!!! They are fired-up about books and reading.  One of our girls told us that Saturday night she slept with her medal around her neck. Just priceless!!!!                

Quilting At Mulberry

Well, I made it. I've been back at school/work for a week. It is wonderful to be back with our students and actually teaching. It's a bit of a stretch for me to teach several groups in a row, but I made it. Yesterday, one of our teachers of the gifted and talented students asked me to speak to her second graders on quilting. It was a blast! These seven year old boys and girls were "psyched about quilt blocks". They had chosen blocks from the endpages in The Quiltmaker's Gift. They made blocks with paper on graph paper and are doing research on their blocks. I did my class on comparing Quilting in the Past to Quilting today. I brought digital pictures to show them of old treadle machines, quilts, our Stitch-ins today, my computerized sewing machine and my sewing room. I brought my Featherweight so they could see a real sewing machine.  I brought a stack of quilts for them to look at and touch. They loved finding blocks they knew in the real quilts. I felt it was important for them to know that quilters read patterns to make quilts. It's important for us to follow directions. I brought a work in progress with the pattern so they could see I had directions for the blocks.  I dug through some of my scraps and strings. I left a bag of fabric scraps and batting for the students to "play with." Even if they just fondle the fabric and enjoy the colors it will be fun.

I always like to have a picture on a blog post. Of course, I didn't think to take a picture yesterday. Here is a picture of the quilt that I made for our school Media Center. The pattern is called Mulberry Bush which is fitting since our school is Mulberry Elementary.

I'm off to Athens, Georgia tomorrow for our State Media/Library Conference. It will be two wonderful days spent with many media specialists from my County and around the state of Georgia. Lots of books and good friends! Even a couple of quilting librarian friends like Brenda at Quilting Cowgirl and Kristie, M.S.Doolittle Quilter. I'll check back later in the weekend.