My new library has several perfectly serviceable book trucks - 4 small ones and one larger one (like the one above). While they are functional, they aren't exactly aesthetically pleasing. They are that boring, industrial greige/putty color. Again, serviceable, but not very fun. After looking into the cost of replacing them, I quickly decided that it would be more cost effective to paint them to match the colors I wanted. Here's how it went! STEP 1: Transport said ugly book carts home. I am well aware they didn't really need to come home with me, but it was definitely easier to work on them at my house instead of at school - I have all the painting tools here, and the commute is a little over an hour round-trip if I forget something. STEP 2: Rough them up a little bit. I used a palm sander with fine grit sandpaper to rough them up, then hand-sanded the parts that I couldn't reach with the sander. My neighbors probably think I've lost it - I was out there sanding at 7:30 am because I was trying to get it done before the July heat set in for the day! STEP 3: Prep. After sanding, I wiped the carts down with a damp cloth to get the dust off. I also taped grocery bags around the wheels to protect them from overspray. Step 4: Prime I used Rust-oleum Professional Primer in a matte gray color. It worked beautifully. It took me two cans for good coverage on each smaller cart. I let the carts dry and "cure" for 24 hours before I did the next round of paint! One down, one to go! All primed, ready for paint! STEP 5: Paint! Finally - the moment I was waiting for ... time to transform these ugly greige carts into gorgeous, bright, beautiful lime green carts! YAY!!! Goodbye greige, hello COLOR! Key Lime, to be exact, in Rust-Oleum "Painter's Touch" Gloss. Well, here goes nothing! First coat down, and already it looks AMAZING!! And the finished product! 3 cans of spray paint later and they are this GORGEOUS shade of lime green.
Total project cost: Primer - $14 (2 cans) Spray Paint - $12 (3 cans) I already owned a palm sander, had the painter's tape and grocery bags to protect the wheels, and had the fine grit sand paper on hand. For about $26 and a two hours of my time, these formerly grey carts are now transformed. I am taking them back to school to finish curing before I use them for books. I will update with how they hold up over time! Now... about those OTHER ugly carts I have.... ha ha!
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Each year, the SPMS Media Center holds a bookmark contest. Students can enter original artwork for consideration as the school bookmarks for the year The students vote for their favorites. Here are our 2019-2020 winners! 6th GradeCongratulations to Sergia N. and Tessie D.! 7th GradeCongratulations to Kristalyn N., Catherine B., and Averie B.! 8th GradeCongratulations to Libby F., Peter R., Hope D., and Lucas O.!
The SPMS Media Center held our first annual PEEPle's Choice Awards contest, wherein participants made dioramas inspired by their favorite books, starring the popular PEEPS candy! Entries were accepted for 6th grade, 7th grade, 8th grade, and Faculty/Staff. We had some truly remarkable entries! Student voted for their favorites in each grade level - it's a PEEPle's Choice Award, after all! Our winners were: 6th Grade: Ready Player Peep! 7th Grade: Jurassic Peep 8th Grade: Peep Little Faculty/Staff: Winnie the Peep Each winner earned a $25 gift certificate to our Scholastic Book Fair! The entries were amazing - I am so proud of the students' creativity! Check out the rest of the entries below... they are so funny! The third annual Springfield Middle School Bookmark Contest was held during the month of November, and the results are amazing! We had over 40 students enter some amazing work. We had memes, feathers, quotes, book covers - so many great pieces of art! Check out the best of the best below... these bookmarks were voted the winners! Want to run a bookmark contest at your school? Here is my original form where the students turned in the work. Feel free to download it and use it as needed.
Students had from November 1-20 to turn in their entries, then voting lasted one week. Copies of the bookmarks were posted in the library with numbers (not with names). Voting was done via a QR Code attached to Google Form. Students were allowed to vote once per
The SPMS Knitting Club had our first meeting last night, and it was amazing! We had such a great time learning how to needle knit, loom knit, and crochet. We practiced casting-on and basic knit stitches during our first meeting. Over the coming weeks, the students will learn more techniques, including: knits, purls, yarning over, increasing, decreasing, and more! They will then select a project (such as a hat, scarf, ear wrap, etc.). Several of the students expressed interest in knitting newborn hats for our local hospital! Are you wondering why you should learn to knit? In addition to being able to make cool projects, it turns out that knitting has some neat health benefits as well. Read about them here! We had a lot of staff interest, too! Special thanks to the teachers who helped oversee the club and teach the various skills. Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Knepper, YOU ROCK! Are you an SPMS Student or staff member interested in joining knitting club? Check out our meeting dates on our website: http://www.springfieldmiddle.com or see Mrs. Hurley for details! Check out pictures from our first meeting below - it was a blast! As you can see, we even had one student's Nana come to knitting club. YAY! Summer school is a great opportunity to try out some unconventional projects - the kids need extra motivation to continue to show up and work when it should be summer vacation. One of the most popular items in our Makerspace are the Sphero SPRK+ Robots. These small, easy-to-use robots are constantly skittering around underfoot in the library during the school year. They are sealed, so they are waterproof, too! I'd heard about using the Spheros to paint on Pinterest a few months ago, and I just KNEW we had to try it! However, the idea of having a classroom full of middle schoolers driving paint-covered robots around my carpeted library made me twitchy. I knew it would have to be a small group setting when other students would not be walking into the library... summer school seemed like the perfect opportunity to try out this fun way to create some abstract artwork! We used 9'x12' plastic painting tarps on the floor, the SPRK+ Sphero robots, the SpheroEdu app, washable tempera paints, 8.5"x11" cardstock, and one iPad per Sphero: I was really impressed with their completed work! We discovered a few tips: 1. LESS IS MORE. Paint, that is... use less paint than you think you need. It spreads! 2. SLOW DOWN. Turn the drive speed down on the Spheros - otherwise you'll end up driving paint-covered robots on the carpet. Not that we did that or anything... 3. MODEL. I know that shouldn't need to be said, but model the expected behaviors first so the kids understand what they are to do (and NOT to do). I modeled everything and the kids were very careful and responsible with the robots and the paint. What could have been a huge mess was a really fun art project! If I were to do this during a regular school year, I would add a coding component too - the students did some limited coding with this project, but mostly drove the robots over their paper. I would use larger sheets of paper and require the kids code their robot to drive a pattern or path! My summer school sessions were time-limited, so for this project they were driving the robots manually. Check out some pictures of the students' work below, and don't forget to comment on how you might use Spheros to make art! In an ongoing effort to put books in the hands of kids, I decided to run a FaceSwap contest during the month of December. Face-swapping is an option in Snapchat, and there are several apps out there that allow users to swap faces. The challenge for the library was to FaceSwap with a book! Biographies are easiest of course, but there are several Fiction and Everybody books that made for some great FaceSwaps. To encourage entries, I am giving away a SweetFrog gift card for each winner. There are contests for 6th grade, 7th grade, 8th grade, and teachers/staff! Here are some of our hilarious entries below... once you're done laughing, go make one of your own! The library hosted our 2nd annual bookmark contest during the month of November. Students could enter their original artwork between 11/1 and 11/17. Voting opened on 11/18 and ran through 11/30. All bookmarks featured below will be printed in full-color and available for students to take. Congratulations to our winners - HERE THEY ARE! 6th Grade7th Grade8th GradeA few weeks ago, my supervisor shared a cool idea for a Makerspace on her WCPS Library Media Programs Facebook Page - it was a large piece of mosaic artwork made from stickers by the company Stick Together. These pieces of artwork are a stick-by-number mosaic. They provide the blank paper with the outlines and a lettered grid. The enclosed stickers are small, approximately 1/2" square each. I contacted the company about doing a custom photo of a cougar since our Mascot is a cougar, but the price was cost prohibitive for my budget. Instead I selected Van Gogh's Starry Night. It looks like this: The total picture is 60" x 36" - quite large! When it arrived, I hung it up with some directions: The stickers are color coded but not marked on the sticker pages, so I added them to folders to keep them organized and cut down on sticker misuse/waste: I also only put out one color at a time for students to work on. It helped keep disagreements to a minimum. We started with black because Starry Night has a LOT of black in it. Within just a few minutes, I had students wanting to sticker. They LOVED it! Over the next few weeks, many students and staff got in on the stickering action! According to the Stick Together website, it should take 5-8 hours of continuous stickering to finish a picture of this size. It took my students about 3 weeks total, and it was really fun to watch it change every day. Here's the finished piece: Doesn't it look AMAZING? I'm so proud of them! Now that we finished the first one, my students are asking when the next one will be hung up... I'm feeling like it might be time to order some sunflowers! Or maybe some hot air balloons!!
How would you use this in your classroom or Makerspace? Comment below! Welcome Back, dear readers!! Summer was short and busy, but it's great to be back to school. We had some AMAZING entries for our Summer Reading Challenge from the SPMS Media Center. To complete the challenge, students had to read 5 or more books over the summer AND redesign the cover-art for one of the books they read. The results were amazing! Take a look at some of this incredible Cougar artwork! The students who participated will have the opportunity to come to the library for snacks and to make a cool LED bookmark. Directions and pictures of our party are forthcoming. I am so proud of our students!
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About the AuthorHi! Welcome to my blog! My name is Christine Hurley. This is my 17th year of teaching - I've taught Kindergarten, 4th grade, elementary media, and now I am in my 6th year of teaching middle school media! Archives
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