and baby makes four: BATTLE!

Mackenzie is a reader. Not just a normal reader but an I-can-read-for-eight-hours-straight reader. She has found her niche in her new school, where the librarian encourages them to come in anytime to check out books. She has a teacher that has over 1000 classroom library books, and we've been frequenting the local library, which is literally 3x the size of our previous library. She is in book heaven! And to add to that, her school recently hosted "The Battle of the Books." This is an event for 4th and 5th graders to read some excellent books (I read all of them, too!). After they've read the books, they take a computer generated quiz on them. If they read and pass quizzes for 6 out of the 10 books, then they qualify to be on a battle team. Of course Mackenzie read and passed the quizzes for all 10 books, so she was definitely on a team! Myself and a parent from a nearby school were coaches for this team and we spent a few Saturdays at our local library, and had a few after school meetings. The kids spent this time coming up with a team name, a team motto, and a costume. Then the other parent and I bombarded them with possible quiz questions. Not only could they get basic trivia type questions during the battle, but they also had to be prepared for questions that might tie the books to each other, to core democratic values (ie life, liberty and the pursuit of justice), or to character education traits (ie kindness, respect, honesty, etc). There were some tough questions! Mackenzie's team didn't win, but I think it was a great experience for her and she's excited to do it again next year!