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In first grade we are learning about poetry by playing the paper bag game. I don't tell the students what we are going to be studying for the next few library lessons. Instead I  introduce poetry with a game - The Bulldog Paperbag Game!

Let me tell you about our Floor-etry. First, floor-etry is a poem on the floor. That's it. It's simple and vastly influential in the process of creating an early literacy environment.  We here at the Allen County Public Library  got the idea from Saroj Ghoting's website for early literacy. In a presentation put together by Dana Bjerke, Joanna Redman and  Kelly Wussow from the Hennepin County Library, you can flip through different slides and see inspiring ideas that make words accessible to even the littlest of patrons. We thought, "We can do that!"

And we did! We wrote a poem that is actually just a string of similes so the reader can start anywhere in the circle and the poem makes sense. We typed it up in HUGE, easy to read font, printed it out on bright paper and cut out the words. After cutting out the words, we laminated each one and added Velcro to the back for a temporary hold. We placed the poem in the front of our department in the shape of a (yellow) sun!

Resource! Talk about a terrific primary source! In the summer of 1865, a former slave by the name of Jourdan Anderson sent a letter to his former master. And 147 years later, the document reads as richly as it must have back then.

We recently put up a book display that has books flying off of the shelves! Flying, I tell you! It seems that as soon as we fill it up, it is empty again.