To Do List: Technology

 

Yes technology! If you are not already using technology in the classroom, consider adding it to your To Do list for the summer. There are lots of programs and apps out there that can be easily incorporated into the early childhood classroom. This post showcases children’s work and activities using technology and with just a little bit of effort and time, you too can use these programs too!

We suggest picking one or two of the programs/apps and spending some time this summer playing with them. These are some of the programs/apps that were used this year:  Voki, Chatterpix, Thing Link, Little Bird Tales, and a few others. Get a feel for what it does and how it can be integrated into your teaching and student activities. You will be surprised how easy (and fun!) it can be.

Voki’:
Voki allows us to focus and get the class ready to learn!

Thinglink:

Thinglink allows you to take an image and insert videos, books, links….

Chatterpix
Used for animating their work!

Shadow Puppets 

Books about Names Reviewed by Sock Puppets - SafeShare.TV

Little Bird Tales

• Click to view my tale.
• 

• Click to view my tale.
• 

iMovies

 

Tagxedo & Wordle
Word cloud designs!

QR Codes

 

Apps!
Apps such as Pic Collage, Stitch, Skitch and so many other can be used for creating learning posters, anchor charts, and labeling activities

 

 

 

Technology Pinterest Board:

Plip, Plip Plop!

We have actually seen more sun this spring than we did all of last winter and spring combined! We did have rain this week, thank goodness, since the water cycle was part of our lesson plan for preschool. Parents were amazed at how their four and five year- olds grasped the concept of the water cycle through the hands-on experiments that we did to represent the water cycle.  You have to love the cotton ball as a cloud that sucks up the water and then the rain is represented when you squeeze the cotton ball. J The children loved watching their cups of water too to see if the water would really evaporate.  It is so cool to hear them use the term evaporation when they are talking to each other!

On the other side of the water (not literally), kindergarten was talking about animals that live in the water. Sharks and whales are usually a topic of excitement, but there are lots of interesting animals that live in the ocean and plenty of fun activities that you can do to include a variety of them.  Our kindergarten class did research on an ocean animal and incorporated technology in their research to present what they learned. Awesome!

Web Quest: The unit of study on ocean animals started out with a web quest and listening to Bart the Shark (Voki).  The students were on a quest to find the information about their ocean animal and created their books.  Some were published on Educreations and others on Simplebooklet.

I just made a new Voki. See it here:

Educreations Reports:
Some of the students were allowed to create their animal report on Educreations. Please excuse the pictures that are sideways.  They did an incredible job considering it was the first time they were allowed to be fully independent on their creation!
  

  simplebooklet.com simplebooklet.com
Simplebooklet Reports:

Under the Sea Pixie Slides showing what they learned:

Other activities:

Kindness Book of the Week:

We couldn’t decide between these two books to focus on for our Kindness book of the week because they are both so incredible.  Fish is Fish is a story that’s simply and wonderfully symbolic of how friends can remain friends even when they change as they grow up.  Swimmy is the story of little fish banding together to scare off bully fish.

iPad Apps:

Motion Math: Hungry Fish

Ocean - Animal Adventures for Kids

Pinterest Board:

Freebie:

Product:

Youtube video:

Pictures of the waters in Lipsi (Greece)

Have a great Dolphin Week!

Random Acts of Kindness Feb. 10-16

Hello friends!  It’s February and for me that means it’s the month of love, sweetness, kindness… Well no more!  What I mean is – Every day of every month of every year should be the time of kindness.  February 10-16 we celebrate Random Acts of Kindness week.  This year more than ever I’ve observed acts of meaness that I made it a point to read and address kindness in some shape or form to my kids.  If we start young perhaps we can make a difference?  Have we gotten so busy in our lives that we failed as teachers, parents, in developing our children’s characters?  Maybe it will take a daily story or perhaps a daily act of kindness to engrain kindness and compassion.   We’re more likely to find less acts of bullying if we address Kindness and Compassion and develop a better tolerance toward each other – not just around certain holidays, but all year long.  Kindness should know NO calendar!  What do you think?

For My Kindness story of the week, I chose Kindness is Cooler, Mrs. Ruler (written by Margery Cuyler)  because of the creative rhymed words of wisdom the teacher offers to the class such as, "A slice of nice makes a mile of smile" and "Good deeds fill needs." and for the neat slogan:  Kindness is Cooler!

 

In this story, the kindergarten teacher Mrs. Ruler is frustrated with her K class who has been acting out all week long and decides to charge each student to perform five acts of kindness.  I also love the fact that the author includes a list of 100 acts of kindness (you can tie it in with the 100 days of school). 

I’ve just finished creating a product that includes random acts of classroom kindness.  I plan to cut up the RACK hearts, place them in a jar and have the kids do a daily act!

And… to get them more motivated I’ve included them in QR coding!  (yeah gotta get some technology in somewhere).  I’ve also included some blank hearts for kids to come up with their own activities as a homework project or to generate their own in QR code.  If you click on my "follow me on bloglovin" button I will provide this product as a freebie that is normally for sale at my store. Just send me an email so that I can get this product to you! 

 

 

 

Another neat project from our talented art teacher this week:

 

 

One more thing: I'm linking up to Farley's for February's Currently!

 

2 truths 1 fib:  I love collections of all kinds – dolls, baskets, pottery, quilts, antiques, wreaths,…. And I love my green tea!  But I hate to sleep! I guess I’m in the minority as far as sleep goes!  There aren’t enough hours in the day to do the things I wanna do!  Like spend hours doing some crafts with my artsy buddy or finishing my fabric angels!   I’m working on four of them – one for each season but just not enough hours in the day therefore sleep is an overrated activity!  I could be finishing these up ….

 

 

 

 Here’s to a week that’s one of a KIND!  LOL!