NESA schools

Greetings from the Udhailiyah School Library.

I the autumn time comes to Saudi Arabia and the temperatures get a little cooler. I enjoy reading a magical book by William Joyce, entitled The leaf men and the brave good bugs.

After reading this story I give my students a little sack and take them on a nature walk around the school grounds. We collect leaves, pods, flowers and grass. I discuss with students plants that can be picked and which ones to avoid due to poison sap. (During one such walk we found a newly planted oleander in the elementary play ground area. I talked to the school administrator and we had the plant removed from the school grounds.)

After our little nature walk we returned to the library and each student created their own leaf man... and of course the girls asked if they could make a leaf girl... I said go right on ahead and use your imagination!

The students glued their bits and pieces onto a sheet of colored paper. I have to say that the students came up with some very interesting leaf people to take back to class and put on display! A wonderful time was had by all...

Clara Caterpillar By Pamela Duncan Edwards

One of the things that my students and I really enjoy during our library lessons is turning library storybooks into creative projects! Here one of the books that students gained a great deal of creative enjoyment from.

After reading this story we talked about the different stages of development that butterflies go through; we the took colored craft sticks and glued on wobbly eyes and pipe cleaners, then added little stripes of glitter glue and let them dry.

While the glue was drying we took multicolored paper and created a set of beautiful butterfly wings out of a single sheet of paper and decorate them with markers and cut out shapes from color paper.

We glued the body in place in the middle of the paper wings and then hung them up for display on a library bulletin board that read "WE ARE BUGGY ABOUT BOOKS!"

This activity generated a great deal of interest in wanting to check out the book Clara Caterpillar and in locating and checking out more non-fiction books in the library about butterflies!