❆❅❄ Winter Wonderland Digital Breakout ❅❄❆

Are you looking for "that activity" to carry you into the holiday break? Or maybe you're looking for an extension to use with students as they wrap up their work this time of year? Or, like me, you have a small group of students visiting the library and need an activity for them? It might be a good time for a digital breakout!

We've both hosted classroom breakouts and worked through several library or advisory breakouts--both physical and digital--over time (you can read about them here), and today's breakout is very similar to others we've used. Today's breakout, Locked in a Winter Wonderland, comes from VirtualEscapeRooms.org, which was featured recently on Matt Miller's Ditch That Textbook.

In fact, Matt Miller and Virtual Escape Rooms have a limited-time offer for this particular breakout, and you can get it for free when you enter the code "ditchbook" at checkout. You can access the breakout here. 

Students could sign up to participate in the breakout during advisory today, and after listening to the introduction to the activity, students could choose to work in groups or individually to tackle the breakout.

Once students got into the breakout and clicked around a little bit, the sleuthing and unlocking happened quickly! The largest group seemed to have an effective problem-solving approach and worked through the pages efficiently, while other groups took their time, but in the end, each of the groups was able to solve the lock combinations.

A great activity to get students using their problem solving skills and thinking critically--and to enjoy the season! ⛄

👀 #TakeALookTuesday--Digital Magnetic Poetry Edition

We continue to celebrate National Poetry Month in the library--this time it was with an activity from Eric Curts and Control Alt Achieve. The magnetic tile poetry craze from the 1990's meets Google Draw in Curts' template that he graciously shares from his website. 

CLICK HERE for link

In this drag-and-drop activity, students could use any of the provided tiles to write their poems, or they could include their own word choices with the blank tiles as well. The springtime image served as their backgrounds as they wrote before sharing out some of their work. (On Curts's site, you can also choose templates that feature wintertime or Valentine's Day images.) Students had time to write their poems, then nearly all chose to read aloud what they'd created. We snapped our fingers and supported our poets-in-residence appropriately!

Curts's site has several poetry-inspired activities for Poetry Month--why not visit to find another way to celebrate the month?

👀 #TakeALookTuesday

We're starting a recurring, weekly post called #TakeALookTuesday when we'll feature all sorts of library-related content. For our inaugural post, we're taking a look at one of the things available to students on the library website--a virtual makerspace located at the Makerspace Materials tab.

Access the library website HERE.

The virtual makerspace comes to us courtesy of Shannon Miller and The Library Voice. Each month she curates multiple resources for K-12 students to access, and the virtual makerspace on the library website is from her work.

CLICK HERE to access.

When students access the virtual makerspace, they have dozens of making options. In addition to art-themed choices, more specific sites that focus on color or paper crafts are available. Sites related to learning to code and expanding coding skills are included; in fact, another separate choice board related to coding (and featuring another 15 sites!) is embedded there. Building and making are included on the virtual makerspace, as well as bonus sites related to design.

With so many options available, stay tuned for AO offerings that make use of the virtual makerspace site. Creating and designing and making were never so convenient!