It's Spring Break, Van Meter!

We hope that all of you have a special spring break.

As we get ready to enjoy this time with our family and friends, we wanted to send out places for everyone to go to stay connected to reading, creating, technology, fun and of course, our library.

Please enjoy these resources with your family. These are things that our kids are familiar with because we use them in the library and classrooms.

We hope everyone learns, creates and reads a little something new over the break too.

When we get back, we have 3D printing, the Van Meter Stop Motion Film Festival, video game building with Bloxels, augmented and virtual reality, digital storytelling and so many celebrations of literacy including Skype visits with authors and illustrators, creating digital stories together with others around the world, our spring Follett Book Fair on April 1-5, 2019 and so much more! It is going to be an extra exciting end of the year.

We will see everyone on March 25th. Have fun and we can't wait to hear how you spent your time together.

Shannon McClintock Miller and Jessica Rabe

K12 Teacher Librarians at Van Meter Community School District

We use the Van Meter Library Symbaloo as a place to bring all of our resources we use in the library and classrooms together in one spot. You will see that each grade level has a tile, which goes then to that grade level specific Symbaloo. All of our students have been using this since the start of the year, so they are very familiar with it too. You will find it here.

Ask your children how we have used these in the library and classroom!

...lots of places all of the students have visited and learned about throughout the year.

There is Bloxels, Typing.com, Buncee, PebbleGo, Scratch and more!

Remember, each grade level has a Symbaloo and that is where the kids go to on a daily basis. We continue to add and change things on them too.

The Van Meter Reads Symbaloo can be found on the main one but we wanted to highlight this one too.

This is a new Symbaloo full of places our students can go to read anywhere, anytime. In the top left hand corner, you will find our library catalog, Destiny, where you can see what we have in our local collection at Van Meter. There are eBooks, databases, book talks, video of illustrators, nonfiction sites for reading and information, music videos that go along with books, and so much more!

If you click here, you can locate not only the books we have in the library, but the online resources we have too. You will find eBooks, databases, open educational resources and more.

All of our students and teachers have their own login. It is their lunch number for both username and password. Let us know if you need any help logging into Destiny.

The Keyboarding Symbaloo contains lots of different places to practice keyboarding. With our kindergarten and first graders, we want to practice using the mouse and other keys. We also want them to be able to tell us where the different letters and characters are on the keyboard.

Our 2nd through 5th graders are using Typing.com. Each student has a unique username and password. They are really enjoying getting better and better at keyboarding all the time. It is important for them to practice at home as much as they can too.

The Coding Symbaloo filled with tons of awesome free coding sites, stories, songs and other resources.

With coding being an universal language and one that is used in almost every career, coding is an essential skill that our students need to have now and for the future. By practicing, creating and being able to code, they will have the skills they need.

This Padlet is filled with awesome augmented and virtual reality tools and resources that our students have been using at school and that they can also use at home. Most of the apps are free and they do not need a MERGE cube or goggles to work.

However, we have some very exciting news! We recently received 100 MERGE goggles and cubes from our friends at this amazing company and will be checking them out of the library for families to use at home too.

We will be sharing this news soon.

We had our very first Van Meter Film Festival over the last month with our fifth graders! Check out their special stop motions film over the Van Meter Vision Points in the iMovie above.

Our VMEPC have funded five 3D printers and after spring break we will be integrating them into each grade level and throughout the curriculum in the classrooms and library.

Thank you to the VMEPC and all of our amazing families at Van Meter.

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Check out there Mystery State Buncee's on this Buncee Board and see if you can guess the states too!

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You will read about lots of innovation in education. students projects and activities, new books and resources, technology within our building and so much more.