The votes are in and the winner of the second annual MCDS k-2 favorite character vote is...

Last year the winner was Tacky and LRC staff took him with us on our vacations over the summer.

Tacky had a good year as reigning favorite character at MCDS and we enjoyed seeing his pictures posted in the Dragon Room.  As he handed the crown off to Olive, he gave her a piece of advice: summer is a great time for reading while you're relaxing on your vacation!

We had so much fun taking Tacky with us on our vacations last year that this year we're inviting our students to join us.  Just print out the attached version of Olive and take a picture with her over the summer (or take a picture with a space for Olive and add her in digitally).  Whether you're traveling to some exotic locale or staying at home Olive would love to join you.  Especially if you're going on a car trip.  We all know how much Olive loves sitting at the windows of cars!

So hang out with MCDS's 2012 favorite character champion this summer.  Send your pictures in to ebretall@mcds.org and I'll update a slideshow with Olive's travels here on the LRC website throughout the summer (be sure to state in your e-mail if you want your picture to go on the website or only in the display in the Dragon Room).  Be sure to check the blog for updates as well!  If you have physical pictures, then you can drop them off in the fall and I'll add them to next year's Dragon Room display.  If you have any questions or need any help adding Olive in to your pictures digitally, just e-mail me and I'll do my best to help you out.  Have a great summer everyone!

"The most important developments in civilization have come through the creative process, but ironically, most people have not been taught to be creative." 
Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance, 1994

These books are available in the LRC to spark your creative thinking this summer.

Steal Like an Artist: 10 things nobody told you about being creative by Austin Kleon is a fun book.  It is full of quotes that will make you think.
"Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic."     Jim Jarmusch.

The ten transformative principles will help your build a more creative life.

In Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius by Michale Michalko, the author  examines in each chapter a different creative thinking strategy. This is a very readable book; just reading the introduction in which he summarizes the eight strategies will get your creative juices flowing.

Check out the exercises and thought experiments on his website:
http://creativethinking.net/WP01_Home.htm

IMAGINE : How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer
"Flummoxed by an intractable problem? You probably just need to work harder, right? Actually, try taking a walk instead. Thanks to how we’re hardwired, insight tends to strike suddenly—after we’ve stopped looking. In this entertaining Gladwell-esque plunge into the science of creativity, Jonah Lehrer mingles with a wide cast of characters—inventors, educators, scientists, a Pixar co-founder, an autistic surfing savant—to deconstruct how we accomplish our great feats of imagination. Notable themes emerge: Failure is necessary. The more people you casually rub shoulders with—on and off the job—the more good ideas you’ll have. And societies that unduly restrict citizens’ ability to borrow from the ideas of others—see our broken patent system—do so at their peril."
--Mother Jones
Watch Mr. Lehrer explain his thinking here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m1VE0QH1OLIYEA/ref=ent_fb_link

Although the author of Manager's Guide to Fostering Innovations and Creativity in Teams comes from a corporate culture, Charles Prather gives helpful advice to anyone interested in implementing innovation.  Key points are how to create an environment that gets people thinking creatively, how to align teams to work toward creative solutions, and how to build a self-sustaining culture of innovation.

The first grade library is always one of my favorite parts of the school year.  I enjoy reading the books the students have worked so hard on throughout the year.  It's also nice to see the community coming together to read these stories as well and share the first graders' enthusiasm for their library.  I've assembled some pictures from this year's first grade library in the slide show below.  

(Inspired by the article by Maria Kramer at http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/2012/05/08/the-avengers-reading-list/)

To celebrate poetry month, MCDS 4th graders wrote their own book spine poems.  See more book spine poems from all over at http://100scopenotes.com/2012/04/02/2012-book-spine-poem-gallery-2/

Try it yourself with your home library or here at the LRC and send us any pictures you'd like us to add to the gallery.  

Even with spring vacation we still checked out 1,408 items to the MCDS community last month.  Hunger Games fever is still strong with 'Hunger Games' the second most searched for query and 'Catching Fire' the fourth (See my previous blog for resources to use to start further conversation around topics brought up in the Hunger Games series.)  Series fiction continues to remain popular in the most checked out titles with the enticingly named Do Not Open the only stand-alone title in the bunch.  The 700's with comics, sports, movies, and art continues to be the most frequented section of the library closely followed by picture books and easy readers as our students practice their reading skills before summer break.  There's only a few more weeks to check out books and then on May 18th everything will be due back so that we can get organized before summer.  Let me know in the comments if there's anything special you'd like to see in the year-end wrap up infographic.