I'm having a busy week, Seuss-ing it up at the book fair!
Here's how our photo booth turned out. The parents are having fun snapping kid photos on their phones. (I wish my laminated Cat in the Hat wasn't so shiny. I wish I didn't compulsively laminate every single decoration I have!)
Anyway, I'm getting ready for a parent night tomorrow night where I'll have little or no help. One of the challenges I have is that parents will ask me to help them find a good book for a third grader, or first grader, or whatever they have. And it's hard to provide them with helpful guidance when the line at the cash register is a mile long.
So, I've created some helpers. (Sadly, I am not clever enough to create book fair robots. If any of you are able to do that, please let me know. After all, we've got vacuum cleaner robots already. Why not book fair robots?)
I've created shelf talkers to put on the shelf and tell everyone the reading level of the book.
I will print these on card stock, fill in the reading levels for some good, popular book fair selections, and add them to our book fair shelves. Then the shelf talkers can help the parents choose books, while I'm busy swiping credit cards.
I may use these after the book fair to label book series in our library. I think teachers and students would appreciate this!
These are super simple, and a free download for you from my TPT store!
I figured out something else, too...I kept my laptop open to the Scholastic Book Wizard to look up reading levels for books that didn't have a shelf talker. That was handy!
Great idea Cari! I'm going to do this for my May book fair. I can't tell you how many people asked me reading levels the last time, and I didn't know off the top of my head!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jessica!
DeleteI'm glad necessity is forcing me to make these shelf talkers. Once I get them copied, I'll be able to re-use them in the future and save myself lots of time trying to look through books and guess the reading level in the midst of a crowded book fair!
Cari
No help? Call your high school and ask if there are any of the high school organizations like national honor society that could help you during book fair. Some organizations require community service. I have had some middle schoolers help me with some library projects.
ReplyDeleteLove your Photo booth idea.... what is the logistics of it... do you print out the pictures or email them to the parents? What do you do with it?
That's a great idea about high school or middle school volunteers! Thanks! I wasn't thinking outside of my own campus.
DeleteFor the photo booth, I'm just supplying the background. Parents are snapping photos of their kids on their phones. Everyone loves to have more cute kid pix on their phone! Also, teachers are taking photos and videos of their students in front of the background to share on their blogs.
It's been fun. Definitely worth repeating!
Cari
Are you unable to get volunteers or just don't have the time to organize that? Believe me I know how that is. I am fortunate to have help at my bookfairs but I wanted to tell you about a free tool called Signup Genius, http://www.signupgenius.com/index.cfm (forgive me if you already know about it) If you could use word of mouth to let parents know you need help you can use this easy tool for people to sign up with.
ReplyDeleteTonya,
DeleteThanks for the suggestion! My problem is a little of both. I have 3 people helping me look for volunteers with a paper and clipboard, so I ended up over-staffed at some times and under-staffed at others. I am going to have to try SignUpGenius this fall!
Cari