Tonight I returned to Liberty Park Elementary for my 5th author visit!
Liberty Park Elementary in Palm Beach County is passionate about books, so it’s no wonder that students and parents love to flock to their beautiful library for Literacy Night. Tonight’s theme was “Reading Oasis: A Cool Place to Discover Hot New Books!” What was really cool about this event is that parent volunteers came to read books to the children in different classrooms.
Tonight I spoke to a classroom full of very curious and perfectly behaved fourth and fifth graders. It was a nice, small group so we were able to interact a lot. It never ceases to amaze me how much the children know about animals and the environment. They even knew definitions to vocabulary words that even surprised their teacher!
What seems to interest the students the most wherever I go is learning about how watercolor pencils work as I run a wet paintbrush through the colors and they see how they blend together. The beauty of speaking to this age group is that they can understand more about the process of publishing a book, and I love to share that experience with them. They were also eager to get up to the maps and play the geography game.
Where is the Gulf of Mexico and what is the name of the hurricane that devastated New Orleans?
I’ve been to so many schools in the past five years and I can tell you that Liberty Park is outstanding. This is a school with such dedicated teachers and administration. You can sense that in the way everyone works together and strives for excellence in teaching their students. The library is beautiful, much like a classy book store, and the lovely classrooms are perfect settings for learning.
I send a big thank you to Media Specialist Michaelina Oliva, who worked so hard to organize tonight’s event and invite me back to the school for the 5th time! She makes me feel so special and welcomed, and I so appreciate it! It takes a lot of planning and physical work to keep a library like that updated and also to put together a big literacy event such as this one together. Another thank you goes to fourth grade teacher, Ms. Ali was so kind and even helped me drag my big maps back to the car. I’d also like to thank Principal Joseph Schneider, who is the most friendly and hands-on principal anyone could ever ask for.