Our Friendiversary Celebration....

We had a wonderful time celebrating Friendiversary for the first time together this year.


Friendiversary is an annual celebration of friendship and reading from First Book and Mo Willems. 


From BookMark, The First Book Blog, 


"First Book is celebrating Friendiversary this week by providing 7,000 new Elephant & Piggie books to second-graders at Title I schools in Louisiana and Massachusetts. The Elephant & Piggie series is written and illustrated by our friend Mo Willems, whose support makes it possible for First Book able to provide these books. Every book includes a special Friendiversary note from Mo, and his publisher, Disney Publishing Worldwide, is also providing activity kits, stickers and posters free of charge to each classroom."


And we will celebrate friendship and reading all year long.  

We Celebrated Bubble Gum Day!

We celebrated Bubble Gum Day together this week.

On Bubble Gum Day everyone who donates 50 cents gets to chew gum at school. It is a great day to have fun and raise money for a cause that you care about. This year we are raising money for LitWorld's World Read Aloud Day (check out how we are celebrating WRAD).

The students at Van Meter raised over $175.00. They sold dozens of packs of gum to the students in kindergarten through 12th grade....even a few teachers came and bought gum. John's students will be celebrating Bubble Gum Day on February 24th.

Author Ruth Spiro started Bubble Gum Day in 2006. She is the author of Lester Fizz, Bubble-Gum Artist.

We had so much fun Skyping with Ruth. She read Lestor Fizz to us and answered questions from our students. She even blew a bubble for us!

You can read more about Ruth's story in this wonderful article from the Winnetka Talk, Deerfield Author Celebrates Life in a Bubble.

The 6th graders at Van Meter created iMovies on Bubble Gum Day. They were given two pieces of gum and 25 minutes. Their iMovie was to explain how to blow a bubble.

Shannon taught all of our 4th graders at Oak Brook and Van Meter about FlipSnack today. They are using FlipSnack with a collaborative state project they are working on. The students in Van Meter created a ComicLife page to celebrate Bubble Gum Day and they put it into a FlipSnack to share.

The 1st and 2nd graders created little Bubble People out of paper plates and balloons.

And then they wrote the steps for blowing a bubble. Everyone is having fun reading them in the hallways.

We LOVE Bubble Gum Day!