Over the past few weeks, 3/4 classes in the library have been practicing for a Mystery Skype. They've learned US geography and map-reading skills in order to prepare.
Today, we finally had a chance to put those skills to use! Mrs. Sorensen's class played the Mystery Skype game with another class somewhere in the United States, and through careful deduction and teamwork, they were able to discover that the other class was located in the state of Illinois! Best of all, they figured it out before the Illinois team guessed that we were in Connecticut!
Mystery Skyping requires each team to ask each other yes/no questions to logically deduce where the other team is located. Below, you can see a video that another school made of their first Mystery Skype.

Honesty, Respect, Responsibility, Kindness, Courage

This week, 3rd/4th grade classes designed elements for a bulletin board display in the library all about how our Core Ethical Values relate to how we use the library.

They came up with some terrific ideas, including:
Honesty: If you lose your book, tell the librarian.
Respect: Treat all materials in the library with respect so others can use it as well.
Responsibility: Keep track of your books and bring them back on time so that others may check them out.
Kindness: If someone is looking for a book, you can help them find it.
Courage: Trying a book that is different that what you're used to takes courage. Also, it can take courage to share with someone else why you liked a book.

This project is something that can be done anywhere! Some Core Ethical Value displays can talk about values at home, while playing sports, going on vacation, and so much more. It's easy to do and uses very few resources.
Here are the instructions:

• First, think about what Core Value you want to display. Brainstorm ideas.
• Get your materials: a rectangular piece of paper (we used colorful construction paper), and a marker.
• Fold the piece of paper in half and, on the outside, write the name of the value you decided on.
• Inside, explain how you can use your value in your chosen situation.
• Hang it up and admire your work.