School News

This week we are reading the 3rd book in the Penelope Rex series, We Don't Lose Our Class Goldfish by Ryan T. Higgins. Penelope has a lot of fears but none worse than her fear of Walter, the class goldfish. He even bit her a few books back! But when Penelope finds out everyone in the class has to take a turn bringing Walter home for a weekend, she really gets scared. Penelope's weekend with Walter does not go as planned, but it does help her ...

It's that fun time of year when we get to read lots of holiday books. Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano is always a favorite and this year, I'm adding Novel Effects soundscape to give it a little extra umph. Turkey has a great idea to survive this Thanksgiving season - a few disguises should do the trick! But somehow farmer Jake isn't fooled, so Turkey decides to appeal to the farmer's love of pizza. Maybe a new tradition is in the works! ...

This week in the library we are reading two Beehive Picture Book nominees - Counting to Bananas by Carrie Tillotson and Field Trip to Volcano Island, by John Hare. Both are fairly short books, in fact, Field Trip to Volcano Island is a wordless picture book. It's been fun to see students unravel the story through pictures only. We vote on these books after reading them and so far the 2nd book has more thumbs ups. But they are both fun. ...

We are celebrating kindness all month and this week I will be reading We're All Wonders by R.J. Palacio to the lower grades. Even when people look different or act different, we can show kindness to them. This is a great picture book based on the chapter book Wonder. Kids of all ages can see more of the Wonder story and understand it's themes. We're also talking about the Battle of the Books Jr program in grades K-3rd. Watch for info packets ...

It's Halloween this week! To get us in a festive mood, we are reading The Good, The Bad and The Spooky by Jory John. As part of the best-selling Food Group series, this book features the Bad Seed, whose in a baaaaaad mood because he can't find a show-stopping costume for Halloween. What's a seed supposed to do? If he can stop trick or treating, would that make him feel better? Maybe he just needs to let this go and put together a quick costume ...

What happens when a witch needs that one ingredient that doesn't want to cooperate?? A witch's favorite treat is frog soup. It's easy to make and healthy too. You add water, salt, pepper and 22 cloves of garlic! Potatoes, carrots and little fly extract round out the soup. But the main ingredient for a pop of color and a kick of flavor is frogs! You just have to get them onto the spoon and into the cauldron before they disappear, which ...

This week we are reading our 2nd Beehive picture book nominee of the year, Chez Bob by Bob Shea. Bob the alligator is quite lazy, and being lazy makes him hungry. So Bob comes up with a genius idea: he will start a birdseed restaurant on his nose! Birds will come to eat and Bob will eat the birds, super simple. He will be rich and famous, get diamond teeth and a solid-gold hat, and have a full tummy. But things don't go exactly as Bob plans, ...

This week in the library 4/5th graders are learning all about our Battle of the Books program! There are lots of ways to participate: students can read books from our list of 20 and earn prizes or they can read books, earn prizes, AND compete on a team in the Spring, where students test each other's knowledge of the books in a family-feud style competition. This is our 6th year participating in Battle of the Books at Upland Terrace! For more ...

It's the Book Fair! We are so excited to host the book fair this week in library: Tuesday and Wednesday, 4:00-7:00 pm. (Cash and cards accepted, sorry no Venmo.) This is an excellent opportunity to support our school while buying books your students will love. As in past years, we've partnered with The Story Cupboard to bring you a wide variety of books. And a portion of each purchase goes toward our school library, which more than doubles ...