All Saints Elementary at Lakeville

I was delighted to get a call from Mrs. Johnson, the librarian at All Saints Catholic School, requesting that I do a program for the fourth and fifth grade students. You see, Mrs. Johnson, like so many of the professionals I meet at the school, is totally engrossed in enjoying what she does, and the positive feeling permeates the entire building. When we visited the school last Monday, students that saw me once last December waved to me in the halls, Mrs Johnson took time to swap some stories with us, a couple of the fourth and fifth grade teachers stopped after the show to shake my hand and chat, and the principal, Mrs. Meskill, took time from her busy schedule to watch a show and swap some stories with me afterward. These are elements that make Nancy and I feel extraordinarily welcome and eager to do a good show.

And then, there are the students, who always seem eager to listen and learn.

Fifth grade students listening to my introduction to A Farm Country Picnic

Fourth grade students listening to the Prologue to Farm Country Tales

 My program for these older students included a short segment on how and why I do what I do and the difficulty I had getting published. This is a piece that I do not do for younger children, but I find that fourth and fifth grade students and on up are often interested in writing down their own thoughts and they like to hear about who might like to read them. Both sessions asked lots of good questions and related some good farm stories, too.

We'd like to thank all the teachers for allowing us class time for my storytelling, and we especially thank Mrs. Johnson and Principal Meskill for inviting us to All Saints. Also, a special thanks to Steve Lloyd, my neighbor who volunteers at the school, for bringing literature on my show to the school and encouraging them to invite me to visit.

Photographs by Nancy A. Fredrickson
These are Nancy's first pictures with our new IPhone.
She loves the phone but concedes she will need to work to get better at using it to take photos.