The Author's Fair wrap-up

Well, you could hear the crickets chirping in here after my last post about the Author's Fair!

I understand.  It was a busy Spring for most of us, and many of you intended to participate but then when the time came to do it you felt like you could not do one more thing.  I get that--I felt that way this Spring too!

So this year our group book ended up being a two-family collaboration.  And guess what?  It still turned out adorable, and was a big hit at the fair!  Read what my E.S. Terry sent me in an email after the fair, which another E.S. had sent to her:

The other E.S.'s family wrote:

We all went to the Authors' Fair yesterday, and the kids were quite excited that people had read their works and left comments.  We looked at some of the other books, and one was a book of riddles ending with "Who am I?"  The kids have been busy writing their own riddles last night and this morning!  M's I wrote into a tracing program, so I printed his riddles out with 'conventional spelling' : ) and we decided to use those for his copywork. 

Thank you for encouraging the kids to take part in the authors' fair!  Nothing else has come close to giving them the inspiration to write - both before and after the fair!

 

Now how cool is that?  Our book was inspiring other kids to go home and think and write!

 

This fun anecdote was just what I needed to confirm in my mind what I already thought we would do for next year's group project:  build the riddle book!  This means that we have TWO projects going on for the Author's Fair of 2014, and you have ALL the information you need right now, a year in advance, to be working on them! 

 

--The "What Is It?"  Book of Nature Riddles  (formerly called "Our Big Backyard") group project, where each child/family can submit one or more pages.

 

--The "Book of Months" family writing project.  You parents are the bosses of this project, but I have provided suggestions and guidelines, and we can have a party where we come together and share these the month before the Author's Fair if you like. 

 

So I encourage you interested families to start working on your Book of Months now, so your kids have plenty of time to really get into it if they want and you don't run up against the deadline next year and be frustrated.  It would be a great summer project!  But as always, these are just things you can do or not, depending upon what your kids needs and interests are. 

 

I have updated the labels for these two book projects so you can just click on the label "Book of Months" and it will take you to all those posts, etc.  : )