October

DOMAIN: a territory or ownership of land

(Don't forget, if you use this word correctly in a sentence you can earn a free bookmark!)

Katherine Applegate (in picture below) has written many books for children and young adults, including The Buffalo Storm (a picture book), Roscoe Riley Rules (a chapter book series), and Animorphs (which she wrote with her husband, Michael Grant.) Her novel Home of the Brave was awarded the 2008 Golden Kite Award for Best Fiction, the Bank Street 2008 Josette Frank Award for children's fiction, and was a Judy Lopez Memorial Award honor book. She received the John Newbery Medal for The One and Only Ivan. She lives in California with my husband, two children, and assorted pets.

You can learn more about gorillas here.

There you will find videos, links, articles and pictures to our student's experiences with this great story.

Star Wars Reads Day is coming to NACP during the week of October 28th! While it won't be quite like the celebrations that happened across the country, new Star Wars books will be revealed and fun activities will be handed out. I can't wait to share them with you! Scroll down to watch the official Star Wars Reads Day video.

Star Wars Reads Day is a nationwide celebration of reading and Star Wars. This year it was celebrated nationwide in bookstores and libraries on October 5th. We will be celebrating Star Wars books at Camp Read Smore Oct. 28-31st. In this special Star Wars Reads Day video (below), authors Timothy Zahn, Pablo Hidalgo, Jeffrey Brown and many more discuss the great tradition of Star Wars books and comics and why they're so important to the Star Wars universe. Visit starwars.com/reads for more information.

Kindergarten through 2nd grade heard Oliver Jeffer's The Incredible Book Eating Boy at our "campfire" earlier this month, but 3rd-5th grade heard a different tale: The Book That Eats People by John Perry. We have that book safely under lock and key with the Incredible Book Eating Boy nearby just in case (see below). This book gave us another good reason to wash our hands before reading a library book. I'm still unsure if that book will be allowed to be checked out of our library.

This month we talked about how fun, wonderful and yes, even MAGICAL, math can be. We were even able to learn a few math tricks! Scroll down to find some of the ones we learned during our library time. You will find a few extras down below as well. Have fun!

(Since we discussed fibonocci numbers, I wanted to include this TED talk. Check back soon for another video explaining the fibonocci sequence with a more kid friendly approach.)

You can discover the science behind the magic and learn all about how the "Mobius Strip" makes it work by clicking here.

Try this on your friends! They will be amazed when you guess their answer correctly before they even say it out loud.

1. Have a friend pick a number between 1 and 10.

2. Ask them to add 5 to the number they just picked.

3. Now, have them add 2.

4. Tell them to subtract the number they started with.

5. Watch their eyes widen in amazement as you tell them their answer is 7!

Try it again. Answer will be 7 EVERY TIME!

This calendar math trick is yet another amazing math activity that lets kids (and adults) see just how cool math is! Just grab a calendar from off the wall or wherever you can get one. Have fun with this trick. No one will be able to figure out how you get the answer so fast!