Thursday morning we saw the Masterminds invade the library and again we talked about travelling, especially since its summer vacation for us all! So there were many journeys and camping trips to discuss!
We started our day off by colouring and decorating some postcards to send over the summer! We also read through some books and then went on a scavenger hunt through the library!
The scavenger hunt took us all around the world from Paris and back to Canada again. Here's some pictures of the kids on their hunt!
Some of the clues required the Masterminds to use the computer to find a specific book in the library!
Another part of the hunt called for the kids to finish a Canadian Map Puzzle!
It was a fun day and we look forward to continuing our journeys here at the library!
For the second week in a row, we had a fabulous movie afternoon in the library with the kids for our Guest Wednesday! One of my favourites, Despicable Me! Such an awesome and lovely movie! The minions are definitely one of the best things EVA!!!!
So we had the kids come into the library and served juice boxes and gummy candies for snacks! After that we just sat back and enjoyed the show!
This week for our Special Guest Wednesday we will be having Diana from the Columbia Basin Water Smart stopping in to visit us! See the previous post for more details: Guest Wednesday - Diana, Columbia Basin Water Smart!
Today's group shot - check out these Mad Scientists! They be cray-ze!
Oho! A whole week late! Here's what we did last week with the Mad Scientists!
We had lots of fun! We watched for the capillary action of water, water bending, and watched the Hank Green video like the Young Professors! We also continued on our Water Week journey by playing with some waterbeads, which I swear, these Mad Scientists would be content playing with these waterbeads hours on end!
Waterbeads! AW YEAH!
Alicen, Haley and Emily playing with some waterbeads!
Sara, (Chloe behind her!), Caleb, Justice and Chase - barely seen! and Kyleen!
Oh! And we were also informed by Miss Emily that Kyleen's birthday was coming up so we sang some impromptu Happy Birthday Songs! :)
I read to them a story from the book: The Kid Who Named Pluto - and the Stories of Other Extraordinary Young People in Science by Marc McCutcheon. What a fantastic book! Its a compilation of stories of young people discovering and creating things to do with science! I had to interlibrary loan it so unfortunately we don't have it here in Beaver Valley, but do look for it elsewhere! Or even come and interlibrary loan it here, like me!
We read the story about Venetia Burney, who at the age of 11, suggested the name of Pluto to name the newly found Planet X in 1930!
There are many more stories in the book, of which I would have liked to read with the kids, yet alas! time is always of importance and unfortunately the hour we spend together goes by like lightning!
We ended playing some games! And of course by passing out some waterbeads for the kids to take home! Awesome!
- The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein
by Kenneth Oppel
I grew up reading lots of Kenneth Oppel, starting from at around Grade 6 or 7 ... I just remember at RSS, Mrs. Popoff reading to the class "Airborn". That was a pretty cool book. And then when I went to Crowe I rediscovered Mr. Oppel and the subsequent sequels to "Airborn", "Skybreaker" and "Starclimber"!
After that I read through his Darkwing series, featuring herds of bats and strange creatures. And more recently I bought and read the chimpanzee/anthropology-like book "Half Brother".
All he books, needless to say, are great, adventure-packed and set in wonderful words of fantasy grounded in some truth.
So when I started working at the library I noticed one of his newest titles "This Dark Endeavour", lying lonely and low on the general fiction! So I took it out for a read!
This book is fantastic, the premise itself, intrigued me greatly. The story follow a young teenage Victor Frankenstein, living in the chateau Frankenstein with his family. Joining his adventures are his twin brother Konrad, good friend Henry and adopted cousin Elizabeth! Here in the novel you learn a backstory to the darkness of Victor Frankenstein and find new found purpose in his past that lead to his future as a experimenter or magicks and science.
Here is a book trailer released for "This Dark Endeavour":
Like Oppel's other novels that I've read this one is packed with excitement, but what I enjoyed the most with this book was the character arcs, writing style and maturity of the story!
The characters (well really just character being Victor) are well fleshed out in this novel! Victor is such a well written and dynamic character! His complete sort of fragmentation of morality and desire, good and bad and right and wrong is fascinating, and I really enjoyed the alchemic aspects to the book! Victor is such a relatable character I think, especially for young adult readers who are going through a stage in their life where emotions are running wild and important choices are being made. You get that feeling from Victor and at times when he goes through this internal struggle of what he should do or not do, this sort of feeling is very reminiscent to me of growing up and being super dramatic!
Also, since this is a period piece dating somewhere in the 18th century, Oppel's writing is ripe with ye old English time sayings and I loved it! The way this is all written is charming, romantic and delightful. It takes you in a time machine to a different time and a different place entirely! It's lovely.
After reading this though, even given the sort of mature themes of love, morality and death, I definitely felt that this book belonged in the YA section of the library.
All in all, this was an enjoyable book to read and also very enlightening to me about the history of Frankenstein. It also made me want to continue the saga by reading the original Shelley version of Frankenstein. I'll have to add that to my reading list!
Thank you, again Mr. Oppel for a stunning novel! 5/5 to you good sir! And for those of you who haven't read any of Kenneth Oppel's books, I suggest "Airborn"! That is a wonderful read!
Today we were featured in the Trail Daily Times Newspaper (click the link http://www.traildailytimes.ca/ to see their website)
I'd like to thank the Trail Daily Times, so so much! It was so nice of them to put our picture in the paper! Awesome!
If you didn't manage to see our picture in the paper or aren't subscribed to the paper this is the picture they had on page 2 of Monday, July 9th's issue, I'll post it again here!
by Ruth Stiles Gannett (published in 1948)
illustrated by Ruth Chrisman Gannett (the author's stepmom!)
My goodness, how I love this book!?!? Let me not count thee ways and just tell ya about it!
I grew up reading this book religiously! Young Amanda just loved the pictures, loved the story and loved loved the map! I was a fool for maps as a young one! And this book has the grand-daddy of all awesome maps in it!
Now this story follows the writer's father, Elmer Elevator, and his mysterious and adventure-packed journey to Wild Island to save a baby dragon from the grips of the wild and very very mean animals of Wild Island! Now Mr. Elmer Elevator is a very smart and cunning young boy and equipped with his street smarts, thinking prowess, and very well packed backpack, he makes his journey possible!
Such a lovely map!
Now not to give away the whole story, since it is only 10 chapters long, this story is great! A definite 5/5! There is a sequel and I think even a third book to the series, of which I haven't read yet! Perhaps I'll read 'em and continue to review the series!
But really this book is such a sweet little thing, easy to read, filled with beautiful pictures and filled with cool exotic animals ... who can talk! AWESOME!! oh yeah, and a DRAGON!!! Can't get better than that really.
Thank you Ruth Stiles Gannett, you made my childhood awesome!
