March is a Long Month

I'm very behind in my blogging- not for any negative reasons, just business.

I was lucky to attend the New Hampshire School Library Association conference earlier this month. Two days of lectures and workshops and authors and books. I had someone to ride with, met my grad school professor, got books signed by Rob Buyea and Jarret Krocoszka and ate some really good food.

I've also been working on the dollhouses lately, giving particular attention to the large, handmade one that was gifted to me. It's in the process of becoming Orchard House. I finally got some of the wallpapering done.

The wallpaper in the Meg/Amy room has roses on it; it's going to have alot of floral details in it because those two characters are so feminine.

The wallpaper in the other room is blue, because Beth is so virginal and it's on the same floor as the attic, where Jo would write at night.

I've been having alot of fun at work. The 8th graders are wrapping up a unit on Visual Literacy, so I introduced them to the Whole Book Approach and Molly Bang's theories and they're doing a great job. Yesterday I made maple-scented playdough with the 4th graders and we had so much fun with it. One of the 4th grade girls recently told me about a book "Wishing for Tomorrow" which is a sequel to "The Little Princess" by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I had never heard of it before, so I told her I would put it on my To Read list. The very next day, there was a copy of the book on my desk, with a note from her, telling me I can borrow her copy. I love being able to develop relationships like that the students, where we can really talk to each other and trust each other.

And speaking of students, I went to see the spring musical at Dover Highschool last weekend, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that a former YMS student was starring in it! She is a great kid, and it's nice to see how successful she is in highschool since I've known her since she was in 5th grade. My husband saw her in school a couple days afterward, and explained to her that his wife is THE Ms. Mawn from YMS, and she was equally excited to know that I got to see her performance.

Today the 4th graders got a mini field trip outside to see a parent volunteer tap a sugar maple tree. I had never seen a tree tapped before or seen the sap running out, and it was cool. It makes me feel like a real New England-er and I like planning different things to do with the kids. One of the students in that class told me this morning how much he was looking forward to it, and he struggles sometimes with behavior in library class, so I was really happy he had such a good time today.

Now that I've written a little update, I'm going to turn my attention back to the 2018 PBS adaptation of Little Women; since I am working on my Orchard House dollhouse, I've been watching different film versions of Little Women obsessively.