Monthly Archives: April 2013

April 18, 2013 · 8:45 pm

Tell Me a Story!

I found another story writing app that I really like! It is called Storybook Maker. I played with it a bit on the weekend and then passed it on to my students to explore. As usual, they were fearless!

Right away, they figured out how to take pictures and import them into their stories. (I hadn’t even done that yet!) Then. they added pictures to the story. Then came the text and the recording of the text. All this on their own! I think that they have become so comfortable with the process with the other apps they have used that it has become intuitive for them!

Then, I showed them about the borders. Today I pointed out that they could add what they call “physics”.

This allows them to add an object to their book that they can manipulate around on the page. You can move the ball around on the page with your finger.

I still haven’t shown them how they can add music to the page…. I bet I won’t have to!

The books can be exported as PDFs. So I will be emailing them along as we finish them!

Hopefully, you have had a look at Spelling City and found this week’s spelling words. The children really seemed to enjoy the games when I introduced them in the lab. Hopefully the extra practise will help them master the words. Watch for next week’s list on Monday!

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Filed under iPads

Tagged as ipads, Storybook maker, writing

April 10, 2013 · 9:48 pm

Blogging Fun!

The students are having a great time exploring our new app called Letter School! Really popular app!

The great thing is that the animations are fabulous. As the children work through several repeats the animations keep changing! Very cool!

I have added a few new pages to the blog. We now have our very own gallery of the wonderful snowmen. If you check at the top of the blog you will find the Snowmen Gallery.

I think I have almost all of them. The missing ones should be there shortly! I thought that the snowmen were just awesome and wanted to display all of them. I hope you approve!

I am also planning to start our spelling tests. I have created a new page and joined a website called Spelling City. You should see the page at the top of the blog.

If you click on the link on the page it will take you to our class home page on their site. The first list is posted on the site. The children can practise the words and there are some games such as word searches that they can do to help them practise. This is new for me and I am excited about the possibilities for the children to practise their words online!

Please make sure that you check in on the student blog site. This week our big buddies helped up personalize their sites. The children got to pick their own template and avatar! I know they are very proud of them. You will need to ask them for the password to view the contents of their sites. We posted a new entry about Twin Day this week. The Kid Blog site graciously increased our storage space! We had run out! We kept trying to post entries with pictures that refused to load until I realized that we had a storage problem. The people at Kid Blog were very helpful and we are very appreciative!

I would like to thank Courtlynd, one of our Grade Four big buddies, for her help with our student blogs on the Kid Blog site! She has become quite a blogging expert and was an invaluable help to me when we were trying to figure out how to get the permissions set so the children could personalize their blogs! Nice to know I have an expert to consult with about blogging!

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Filed under Blogging, iPads, KidBlog, Letter School, Snowman Project, Spelling City, Student Blogs

Tagged as Kid Blog, Letter School, Snowmen Gallery, Spelling City, winter

April 8, 2013 · 9:38 pm

Raindrops and Letter School!

We had fun last week creating these little people carrying umbrellas that are much too big for them! The children created little flip books based on the poem “Rain on the Green Grass” !

They did a great job illustrating them, don’t you think!

Isn’t it amazing that old wallpaper books have the exact patterns that we sometimes find on umbrellas!

I love to surf the app store looking for new apps. This is my latest find! It is called Letter School.

It is a great app about learning how to form letters and numerals correctly. And the best part is that it is fun!

I showed it to the students today and I wish you could have heard all the giggles! It teaches how to form both upper and lower case letters in the conventional format. They had a great time working with it. We continue to share the iPad using the Belkin headphone and some excellent sharing skills. Everyone enjoyed taking their turn! I am hoping that some students will pick up the correct formation of some of the letters they are still struggling to learn to do in the conventional format!

If you move your finger in the wrong direction it won’t move and just makes a funny little noise that indicates that you need to try a different way. The animations for the letters are amazing!

If you have someone in your house who is just learning the names of the letters and how to make them you definitely want to check out this app!

Even students in Grade One AND THEIR TEACHER love this app!

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Filed under iPads, Letter School

Tagged as ipads, Letter School, letters, numbers, Rain poem, Umbrella art

April 3, 2013 · 9:14 pm

An App for Peter Rabbit!

It’s Peter Rabbit time again! This year we are once again doing a mini author study on Beatrix Potter stories. I absolutely love her stories and I think that I have all of them. I have a hard time figuring out which one is my favourite! Can you guess? I have two! Last year I found out the Peter Rabbit has lots of apps on the iPad. Last week, just before Easter, we read Peter Rabbit. We also watched a video I have that is really well done using the pictures in the books on Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny. I wish that I had bought all the other videos in the series as they are really well done. But now I have the apps on my iPad!

The ones I have are really good and the children are really enjoying them. This is the Peter Rabbit app from the Official Peter Rabbit site. It has some really neat features.

I have several Belkin headphone connectors so up to five children at a time can listen and use the apps at a time. They are VERY cooperative!

Even the stuffies enjoy reading the stories!

The other app I have is called PopOutPeter! It allows you to either read the story yourself or have it read to you. It has neat little pop-ups on each page that the children enjoyed.

There is also another Peter Rabbit app created by iActivecom that also reads the story. It has a neat addition in that each page can be made into a jigsaw puzzle. I love puzzles, so this one is a favourite for me! All of these apps are under five dollars. I can’t pick! I love them all!

Yesterday, we read the Squirrel Nutkin story and Mrs. Tiggy Winkle. We still haven’t read one of my favourites yet! One is Peter Rabbit…. can you guess the other one?

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Filed under iPads, Peter Rabbit, Rabbits and Bunnies

Tagged as bunnies, ipads, Peter Rabbit, rabbits