From the Howard County Public Library's Facebook page:

FIVE GARDENS AND GROWING

We are in the home stretch of the 2015 reading program - Friday we'll collect the week 4  numbers and see if we have made our goal.  It will be a stretch, but we are still accepting bonus submissions of recipes and poems, and they can make a difference - Send them to us!  They will also make a wonderful eBook of poetical deliciousness.  This morning I got this splendid poem in my email - reason enough to keep running reading programs for years to come!  All this and feeding people, too, in mind, body and soul.

The small piece of life

In the warmth of dark silt

Waiting for beams of sunlight

To wake the resting

A popping sprout

The plant of hope

That says "I am here"

The soothing rain

Bursting with energy and nutrients

The falling water wet on the rich soil

A strong stem that says "I will stay"

Reaches its roots out

Trusts the earth

And grows taller

   - Rebecca M. 5A

Accidental STEAM from the Library Reading Program

“Read Seed and Feed” is under way with over 60,285 minutes read and reported in the first week of reading!   Books and periodicals are being read, banners are flying in the LS and MS parking lots, gardens of seeds are being “planted” in the Tanglewood library and MS collection space, librarians are blogging, and microgreens are sprouting in classrooms.  We even have a hash tag - #SSFSReads! (Thanks, Michelle!)

Each year your librarians strive to create a reading program that encourages students to read and illustrates how reading, in a quiet but ever-present way, empowers individuals to shape their own lives and influence the world around them.  In doing so we try to incorporate thinking and activity across academic departments.

Interdisciplinary and real world opportunities have been part of the SSFS approach to learning since its founding in 1961 - think maple syrup in 2nd grade and Assateague in 8^th.  Approaching projects through multiple disciplines is a much talked about in education these days, particularly when it comes to science.  You may have heard the acronyms STEM or STEAM.  Turns out the library reading program is moving full STEAM ahead.

S is for Science:  plant biology, seeds, gardening, nutrition, food cycle

T is for Technology:  blogging, posting, and tweeting

E is for Engineering:  the MS Gardening committee-made sub–irrigating planters from discarded soda bottles

A is for Art:  displays, Black History Month bulletin board, one class is making an artistic surprise for the rest of us

M is for Math:  calculations, conversions, estimates and predictions

When I asked a group of MS students, “Why read?” I got a diverse set of answers:  to learn, to understand others, to relax, to escape, to figure out stuff, to figure out about myself. 

Reading opens the way.

Pick of the New Book Crop:

Crocodile loves, loves, loves watermelon.  Check this book out to find out what happens when he swallows a seed!

This book won the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for being the most distinguished American book published for beginning readers in 2014.

6:20 Monday, February 9th
This just in! With about half of classes reporting (some are still adding up the totals) we have 33,779 minutes/seeds. That's almost enough to plant a garden...Have you earned your bonus hour by sending the Read, Seed, Feed postcard through Wee Mail?  Those kindergarten kids love to have some mail to deliver...and a Lower School teacher told me today that it just warmed her heart to hear from kids she taught in the previous year. They remembered their enjoyment of the books she shared. Look for a graphic representation of our progress in the MS collection area (a big sheet hanging from the railing sometime tomorrow morning) and in the Tanglewood library.

     I am writing from home, recovering from the flu.  The good news is, being sick gave me extra time for reading. I read Son by Lowis Lowry and I am about to finish Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation by Michael Pollan, which I have been reading little by little for a really long time.  In the very enjoyable chapter on bread making I came to this quote from Joe Vanderliet, the owner of Certified Foods and a miller for Community Grains that seemed to speak directly to this year's program - "What you have to understand..is that nature made a perfect package when it made the seed, all the parts working together in a living system." Your reading will earn you lots of "perfect packages" to grow and feed many people.  
      We've already received some great submissions for the Week 1 bonus, and we are looking forward to many more.  Here's a padlet wall where you can see the first few and the lovely Google  Doodle from yesterday.   Don't forget to cite your sources!  And have fun reading.   --elizabeth