A Year of Patron of Reading in SMGS

In pics and a few words, a little recap of the year.

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Huge thanks to all who took part

in writing clubs, book clubs, competitions and class visits.

It's been a hoot!

Have a brilliant summer all!

SMGS Patron of Reading: 1 year on!

The school term is coming to a close and with it my year as Patron of Reading for SMGS National School in Dublin 8.
It's been absolutely brilliant and I'm very grateful for the school who essentially said yes to every crazy bookish idea I threw at them, from Writing Club after schools to Christmas competitions and Baby Book Clubs.
Here's a wee video showing all the hard work done and all the great times had.
(You may need to activate Flash for this to work!)

Thanks all and have a brilliant summer!

The Wilds of Kildare

Last week was another busy week, as I was invited to take part in the Children's Books Festival organised by the Kildare Libraries: Newbridge, Athy, Kildare Town, Maynooth, Leixlip, Naas, Celbridge... the county holds no secrets for me now.
I met with hordes of enthusiastic Senior Infants, 1st and 2nd class, plus, once, an entire school where children aged 6-12 all had some excellent questions about the writer's job and the intricacies of Disaster David. They were not alone in this. Everywhere I went, the kids were full of chat and ideas and comments, in the best possible way.

We did a lot of predictions and wondered if people could break their legs in a book for children (they can). We looked at how a book was made and explored the role of the illustrator, the writer and the printer (sorry editors and publishers, you were only briefly mentioned!). We talked about giants and about how we might live if we suddenly became one: would we play football with the moon or basketball with humans? eat our breakfast out of a bathtub? use lots of planes as a jetpack to go about the world? wear trees or houses for clothes?

There were some brilliant suggestions there and some terrific drawing of what life might be like if we had a Gigantor (a gun for making everything giant-sized), if our entire family could fit in the palm of our hand, if we could (literally) break into banks and so on. Some of our giants were too big to fit on the page, one of them (stroke of genius!) even had her head on the other side of the paper!

A week before the end of the school year, one might have worried about a certain lack of focus or too much excitement (in one school they still had the bouncy castle from Active Week up and running, an actual BOUNCY CASTLE!). There would have been no need: those kids were so on the ball and into it, and SO well behaved. Special mention of the school I met in Athy who came into the library, sat down on the mats and just listened without anybody telling them to do any of these things. And also a special shout out to the ladies of Presentation Girls in Maynooth, all 60 of them, who were awesome.
To everyone, thank you so much! It was a pleasure meeting you and sharing stories with you (some young writers in Celbridge actually brought in their own productions!). Have a brilliant summer!

Recommended Summer Reads for 5th and 6th Class!

Stuck for what to read this summer? Here are some great books to keep you busy: quick-and-silly reads, outdoorsy reads, far-and-wide reads and keep-your-brain-ticking reads! Enjoy!

Recommended Summer Reads for 3rd and 4th Class!

Stuck for what to read this summer? Here are some great books to keep you busy: quick-and-silly reads, outdoorsy reads, far-and-wide reads and keep-your-brain-ticking reads! Enjoy!

Recommended Summer Reads for 1st and 2nd Class!

Stuck for what to read this summer? Here are some great books to keep you busy: quick-and-silly reads, outdoorsy reads, far-and-wide reads and keep-your-brain-ticking reads! Enjoy!

Recommended Summer Reads for Junior and Senior Infants

Stuck for what to read this summer? Here are some great books to keep you busy: sunshiny reads, outdoorsy reads, far-and-wide reads and keep-your-brain-ticking reads! Enjoy!

Get reading this summer!

School is (nearly) out and there’s no homework to be done: whatever are you going to do for two months? 😉 Here are a few bookish ideas to try…

Sign up for the Summer Stars programme in your local library!

It’s free and open to all children. Register to get your own Summer Stars Reading Card, choose from lots of exciting library books and get your card stamped for each book read. Fun rewards will be provided along the way. And at the end of the programme, the library throws a party! More info.

Meet the Book Doctors!

Don’t worry, it doesn’t involve injections or anything nasty. The Book Doctor is someone who can give you new book ideas if you’ve read all of the Wimpy Kid or all of Harry Potter or all of the Rainbow Magic books and are stuck for what to pick up next. There are lots of Books Clinics all over Ireland during the summer, find out where on the Children’s Books Ireland website.

Travel with books!

Are you going anywhere interesting this summer? Or do you wish to visit a faraway country? Why not look for a book written in that place? The website Outside In World lists all the kids’ books from around the world that have been translated into English. Just pick a country on the map and off you go! More info.

Read it before you see it!

Read the books that inspired these new feature films: Diary of a Wimpy Kid! Captain Underpants! Valerian! (You probably don’t know this last one: it’s a series of awesome French comics about time-travel and space, highly recommended!)

Write your own book!

Sure, why not? You can get inspiration from these great books!

A toast!

We had our last Baby Book Club last week and it was all about diggers. And trucks. And cranes. We read Susan Stegall's wonderful The Diggers Are Coming! and spent ages looking at the brilliant pictures of all the machines and vehicles needed to build new houses. We actually read the book twice!

We then drove our own cars for a while before PAINTING WITH THEM. That's right, we drove our wheels through paint and made some lovely works of art. The babies were interested to see how different cars made different patterns, but mostly they enjoyed doing something that's not allowed everyday!
To finish the year in style (9 sessions in total, which is brilliant for any book club!), we threw a party of tea and juice and glorious toast.

Thank you so much to all the babies and their grown-ups, it's been a brilliant year! To the big boys and girls who will be going to pre-school next year, we'll miss you, so do pop in and say hi if you can!
And before I forget, here are the links, as always.

For an action-packed day at ‘Digger School’, watch Here Comes A Digger

We Built this City, the Muppets version! 

Madness - Our House:

The Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang song! 

Drive My Car by the Beatles: 

Some characters!

For our final session of Writing Club with 5th and 6th class, we indulged in our love of monsters and gore.
After a game of picture exquisite corpse (that gave us the delightful Flumpkin among other creatures), we brainstormed about all the monsters we knew about before launching into some serious, detailed character building. Beware the banshee and the lightbulb-eating woman! Coming soon to a haunted house near you...

Well done to all and thanks again for the great stories and the great laughs!