Friday, May 2, 2014

Join the Book Club!

Howdy fellow school counselors!

I just wanted to take a minute to spread some great news about...books.  I am a true lover of books.  Big or small, short or long, pictures or no pictures.  As a lover of books, I often incorporate them into small groups and individual therapy.  Books are a great tool to help children process feelings and situations when they do not quite have the words and/or insight to express these experiences.  *SPOILER ALERT* I have some great upcoming posts about specific books and how we utilized them in the Cookie Monster room, stay tuned.

Today, I want to share a resource I recently discovered (because apparently I've been hiding in my cave of an office...).  Scholastic Reading Club.  Yes, those "book orders" from when you were a kid are still available!  I discovered this when one of the Cookie Monster kiddos trucked into our room and asked for help in picking out books.  This special firstie comes from an incredibly impoverished family and rarely has anything to call his own.  Thanks to a grant in our first grade classrooms, every single firstie gets $7 worth of books each month (which equates to 2-3 popular books or 1 super cool book with stickers, in this case).  In helping this kiddo develop an innate love of books, I also found books in the little paper fliers that would be great additions to our Cookie Monster collection.  

Since first grade teachers ROCK, I was able to order with the class and received "Bucket Filling from A to Z" for $4.  Yep, you read that right, $4.  I went on to discover, thanks to this fabulous firstie teacher, that I could log on to www.scholastic.com/readingclub and enter her teacher code to gain access to literally hundreds of books for rock bottom prices.  Most titles are only available in paperback, but you can still find a limited amount of hardback books for less than their cover price as well.  I have since gone a little book order crazy...but the Cookie Monster kiddos have definitely benefited from these finds.  Some of my most recent book orders have included The Way I Feel by Janan Cain, Your Fantastic Elastic Brain by JoAnn Deak, and The Invisible String by Patrice Karst. 




So, connect with a friendly teacher in your school and go a little book wild!

Kristina

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