Okte's Little Free Library

Dedication Day! May 29, 2014

The Okte Little Free Library was dedicated by special guests and the third graders on Thursday, May 29 at 2:30 PM. Mrs. Sofko recognized all of the adult helpers who made our dream of a LFL come true, and Mrs. Bailey shared this blog so everyone would know about the steps we took to complete this project. Every third grader added a book to fill up our LFL for the first time. It was then open for business! The family of beloved teacher Tina Dailey were our special guests. We are thankful for all of the hard work that Ms. Dailey's godfather put in to make the Reading Garden look so beautiful. We hope that the Okte community and all the neighbors around our school enjoy using the Little Free Library for many years to come!

A Few Pictures of Our LFL Journey

The Completed Little Free Library!

There were some jobs to complete the Little Free Library that only Mr. Dougall and Mr. Bailey could handle. Some of those jobs were putting on the doors and making sure it was all water tight. Here is a picture of Mr. Dougall with the LFL right before it was put out on its post in front of the Reading Garden!

The Okte Owl

The children who designed the Little Free Library decided that the Okte WISE Owl would be a good symbol to put on the LFL along with the Charter Sign. Mr. Bailey cut the pieces out of wood after Mrs. Franklin and Maddie traced the owl from our Library Media web page. Bryce's mom carefully painted it, and then Mr. Bailey applied several coats of polyurethane to keep it weather protected. Everyone loves the way he came out. Thanks to everyone who helped our WISE Okte Owl to become a permanent part of our Little Free Library!

The Charter Sign

Every Little Free Library has a charter sign. The sign has the the LFL motto, "Take a book, leave a book." This means that people are welcome to both take and give to the Little Free Library. There are no rules that say you HAVE TO return a LFL book. But if you are done reading it, and want to share it with others, you CAN return it and feel good about that. You can always donate books too! There is a box in the main office to place your donations in. We will put a sticker on the book saying it is an Okte Little Free Library book, and then it will be put out when our supply of books is running low!

A Post from Bianca: Construction

The construction is so AMAZING!!! The LFL is just like our school, the inside will be Mrs. Bailey Green. There will be a window between the two areas. April 22 we are using a hammer and nail, and last time we used a screw gun. We used them to keep the LFL together. We are putting in the window between the areas. Mr. Bailey and Mr.Dougall are helping with construction at the dock. We gone along way with construction. What we are using stone so the LFL is going to look like our school, the stone will be put on the outside. Pretty soon we will have little school!!! Thank you for supporting our LFL!! P.S The LFL donating box will be in the office.

Taking shape!

Our Little Free Library is taking shape! Today, construction on the windows was completed by nailing the frames around the plexiglass windows. We had to be careful with the small hammer and tiny nails! We used our writing hands to hold the hammer, and our helping hands to hold the nail. We also worked on the books that have been donated to the library. We had to decide if the books were for younger or older children, and mark them. We put LFL stickers on each book and organized them on a cart. Our blog is filling up with comments by our group and even some outside friends. If you want to make a comment, just click on the word "comment," and post your words and your first name only. We only post our first name because we want to stay safe on the WWW.

Students Create Book Labels

I was very excited to work with the students on Tuesday to create book labels for the books we will share in our Little Free Library. The students started with a computer template and some pre-designed clip art. They were allowed to get creative in their designs, using the clip art provided. We made sure we used stickers to represent "Okte Little Free Library," "Take a book, Leave a book," and our Okte Library Media Center emblem, the owl. As the students were designing, they learned the importance of spatial design, and how to resize pictures. View the slideshow below to see some of the labels you'll see in the books you borrow from Okte's Little Free Library!

Mrs. Grabkowski
Teacher's Aide (Computer)

Construction Has Started!

Last Tuesday we painted pieces of the library.  This is called priming, and it gets the wood ready.  Up in the library, we made hand drawn labels to put on our LFL books.  The three winners, whose labels we will print, were Joenne, Jonathan, and Aidan.  We also looked at this blog and learned how to post comments.  Anyone can post a comment!  Just click on "Comments" under the post, and you can leave a message for us.  Don't forget to tell us who you are! 

Thank You.

 

Our Plans!

Last week, on March 11, we had our first meeting to build a Little Free Library at our school in the reading garden. The reading garden at Okte is in honor of Mrs. Dailey who was a first grade teacher at Okte. Mrs. Dailey loved reading, and so do we!

First, we came together in a group in our headquarters in the library.  We talked about our ideas of what the library would look like.  We decided it would have a flag and look like our school.  We planned for two sections; one for little kid books (first grade and younger) and the other section would be for second grade through fifth grade.  We talked about having a toy bus on it somewhere.  Mr. Dougall helped us realize how big it would need to be.  The measurements are on the picture on the left.
We will use cedar for our posts, since the bugs will leave that kind of wood alone because of the smell.  We will have several windows so everyone can see what is inside our LFL.

Looking forward to the start of the building process and working with the 3rd grade team.  Fun, fun, fun. :)

Ready to Begin?

How Exciting!

Our charter sign just arrived today!  Our charter number is 12364, which means that there are 12363 other Little Free Libraries out there in the world.  The Little Free Library at my house is numbered in the 6,000's, which means that there has been over 6,000 more Little Free Libraries created just since this past May. 

This is the Little Free Library that Mr. Bailey built in front of our house in Scotia.  The children in our neighborhood love coming to take books.  Sometimes they leave books that they are done with.  I think everyone likes sharing books, and knowing that there are no overdue books, ever!

Mrs. Bailey