Bibliopolis T-Shirt Design Contest!

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To celebrate the four-month anniversary (because four-month anniversaries are a thing, didn’t you know?) of beginning my work here as the Gracepoint Berkeley church librarian this past June, we will be having a Bibliopolis T-Shirt Design Contest. It’s actually another of the kiddos’ fundraiser ideas. 🙂

Design-Me

The kids and some adults have been hankering for a shirt ever since day 1, so we can check another item on the #goals list.

The contest is open to young and old alike across all of our Gracepoint ministries. Wouldn’t it be awesome for a parent-child team to submit a design idea?

You can include some tagline* or appropriately attributed bookish quote to go along with it. If you could refrain from using “City of Books” as the tagline, that would be great. Not that I think Powell’s City of Books (one of my favorite book stores ever) would mind or even notice, but still. 🙂

Please submit your JPG and PSD file to gracepointchurchlibrary@gmail.com no later than October 31, 2015. That gives you two weeks to work on a design. We will unveil the entries for public vote on Sunday, November 1st, which is also the first day of Narnia November *AND* NaNoWriMo. Busy day, busy day. The names of submitters will be removed so as to prevent bias.

Prize: the esteemed title of this year’s T-Shirt Laureate**, and a free shirt with your design on it. Wowza! If you’re not a designer, but a wordsmith, you can submit your tagline as a comment below, and maybe a designer who’s not a wordsmith will pick yours up and run with it! In the case of a tag team victory, you will BOTH win a free t-shirt. Let the collabs begin.

Ideas for a snappy tagline for Bibliopolis? Excited to enter the contest? Or just excited to buy one of our future shirts and wear your love for reading? Chime in below!

EDIT: Be sure to check the update on how you can submit a design without Photoshop.

*such as: “Gracepoint reads,” which isn’t that snappy. Or “One book to rule them all”…uh, I welcome your suggestions!

**laureate: a person who is honored with an award for outstanding creative or intellectual achievement.

 

Books Make Babysitting Better!

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If you remember, I invited people to send me pictures of favorite reading moments you encounter throughout your days. The first person to take me up on this is Frances, a fellow booknerd and teacher from Gracepoint Berkeley church, who was heading up a team of Koinonia staff for a time of childcare with pre-schoolers.

small group read aloud

Read aloud #1 (in small groups)

read aloud large group

Here’s her text verbatim: “This was our second read aloud of the day! Babysitting was so nice* this morning because it was centered around reading! Whole group, small group, independently…”

 

 

*You don’t hear that kind of babysitting testimonial every day. Reading: you should try it next time!

Stealing Reading Moments: Wedding Reception Edition

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the book whispererOne of my absolute favorite books on reading is The Book Whisperer, by Donalyn Miller. Reading this book *actually* changed my (teaching) life, and affirmed the growing suspicion that the traditional way of “teaching” reading has been going in the wrong direction for a long time. But more on this later. I will have tons of time to devote posts to my reading philosophy, and the wisdom I’ve gleaned from Donalyn Miller and Penny Kittle, my two most influential reading gurus, if you will.

Miller writes about “stealing reading moments” whenever we can, and that when we add all of them up, we can gain 20-3o extra minutes of reading a day. Those moments will look different for kids and adults, but can include waiting for your ride, if you finish your assignment early, waiting in any sort of line, on the ferry/bart/shuttle to work. When I was a teacher, I trained my students to seize these moments, and I loved hearing stories from other teachers about how during testing times, they’d look up at the students who finished early and see a bunch of noses buried in books with Kim written across the top. (They’d also see a few trying to sneak on their phones under their desks too, but hey, they probably weren’t my students!)

Anyway, I was reminded of “stealing reading moments” last Saturday when I was at a wedding reception for a couple over at Gracepoint Berkeley church.

kids reading at wedding 3

The smaller kid is actually leafing through a really challenging chapter book classic, but the fact is that he’s super engaged.

I love how “in the zone” they are, oblivious to whatever exciting story Johnson is telling nearby. 🙂 I promise the picture wasn’t posed!

How are you going to try and steal some reading moments this week?