vol 3
issue 2

March 1999

St. Patrick's day is the perfect time to learn about Ireland and the traditions they have in celebrating this festive holiday. The Education Curriculum Library has a new Pathfinder that is dedicated to teaching many wonderful things about Ireland, the Irish people and

Education Curriculum Library and see our display of fun St. Patrick’s day activities.

As many of you know, the Education Curriculum Library has many great fonts to use to spice up your classroom, and in addition to this collection, we have added a new clip art CD. “Dazzle Daze” contains original designs in black and white and color, by Dianne J. Hook which are divided into months with appropriate characters to accent holidays occurring within that month. Along with the CD is an idea book that will help you in

learning how to use the clip art and provides cute ideas on how to make calendars, hand outs, awards and many other creative things. The characters seen within this article are a sample of what kind of clip art you will find on the CD. The Education Curriculum Library workers will be more than happy to assist you in using this, yet another tool to enhance the learning experience.

Wondering how to liven up your Spring
teaching? Well, the Education Curriculum
Library has just the books for you. We have
many seasonal books that help add some spice
to your teaching, especially this Spring. One of
the most resourceful books we have is Spring
Surprises (Curr/Ref ActBks Z78 1980a). This
book has numerous ideas that will benefit your
teaching. It is divided up into the three
Springtime months--March, April and May,
each one highlighting important days that occur

in that month. This book provides activities
that make it easy to liven up all subjects in
the curriculum by tying in different themes related to Spring. March includes Ireland, Dandelions, and the color green. April intro-duces eggs, jelly beans and honey, and May explores showers and flowers. My favorite section is in the month of March highlighting
St. Patrick’s Day. There are 24 pages of ideas that will help you get through St. Patrick’s
Day. As students go through and do the

activities they learn various facts and fun to know stories about Ireland which they can compile into an Ireland book. They will learn about the Irish famine, leprechauns, the blarney stone and why there are no snakes in Ireland. There are great pointers on how to obtain all of this information as well. If this sounds like just what you need to liven up your class room, take take my advice and check out this great book and don’t forget to spread the wealth!

The Education Curriculum Library has a wonderful collection of periodicals that have endless ideas to improve your teaching and classroom. We try to subscribe to the best periodicals to serve our patrons. We have recently found a new magazine to add to our collection that is produced by The Mailbox called The MAILBOX Bookbag The Teacher’s Idea Magazine For Children’s Literature. Each issue contains various sections on new books, including a short summary and a photo of the cover, a spotlight on a particular book

including ways to teach and discuss the book as well as how to integrate the story into other subjects like math. You can also find “Seasonal Selections” which lists various books related to the season the issue is published in and a spotlight on a particular children’s literature author. Inside there are also many other great pointers for teachers on how to make literature and reading exciting for students. So please come check out our new periodical, The Mailbox Bookbag and make your literature unit a great one!