Monthly Archives: October 2013

Fun with Ghosts!

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We have been having a bit of fun with ghosts!  We have a little ghost named Gus who likes to write to us in the morning!  He is very good at hiding Mrs. Anton’s stapler and playing tricks on her!  We like to read stories about ghosts for him.  Recently we read a story about a little white ghost who changes colour depending on the food he has eaten!

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After we read the story, we brainstormed a list of foods that would turn the ghost different colors!  Then the children made their own stories and illustrated them!

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The children have been having a great time reading each other’s books!

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We also made the pictures with the iPads.  I took a picture of the ghost using the iPad camera and we used that as a new background in Doodle Buddy!  The children then used the stamps to choose the object that turns the ghost a new colour.  Then they used the glitter pen to fill in the ghost to his new colour!

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I had to try it too!

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Augmented Reality Fun! Too Cool!

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Today we experimented with an amazing new app on the iPads.  The app is called AR Flash Cards.  AR is short for Augmented Reality.  It is a fantastic app!  I printed off the Alphabet cards on my color printer at home.  Then I cut them apart.  I had already downloaded the app.  You basically open the app, place the ipad over the card and wait a little bit.  Magic happens!!

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A three dimensional animation of the animal on the alphabet card appears on the screen.  When you touch the screen the audio component can be heard.  It tells the child the name of the letter and the animal!

I was able to let all the children see the magic at the same time using the projector and the special adapter cord I have for the iPad.  Later, the children used the iPads independently to try it out by themselves.

I wish I could have taped the looks on their faces when the first animation appeared!

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The alphabet cards are really neat and I know we will get a lot of use out of them!  They were free!  Very easy way to get students interested in alphabet skills!  We will be having lots of fun with alphabetizing, letter sounds, spelling practice, and so on with this app!

There are more cards coming soon but they have a cost attached.  The dinosaur ones could be really cool!

We also worked with another augmented reality app I have discovered.  It is called CoLAR Mix.

I was a bit sneaky!  I had the children color a special coloring page that I had downloaded for them.  I told them if they did a really good job we would do something really cool with it!

After they finished coloring, I loaded this app and just held the iPad over their coloring.

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The pumpkins on their coloring pages come to life and start dancing around the page.  They roll around and pop up on top of each other!  Very cool!  Of course, everyone wants to have a turn!

So far, I have only been able to download the free pages.

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You can see the original coloring page on this screen. The animations are really fun!

We are definitely having Too Much Fun!

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Scarecrow Day Fun!

 

IMG_2236Friday was Scarecrow Day!  I loved all the costumes!  Thank you so much for participating!  We had some amazing scarecrows!  I took pictures of the whole class and individual pictures of everyone!  Good memories!

We tried to figure out how many scarecrows we had in the classroom.  I like scarecrows and I have quite a collection!  We actually didn’t finish counting them all as we got distracted when we realized that we had even more scarecrows because we were all dressed up as scarecrows.  I hope to do the search for my scarecrows next week instead!

We read one of my favourite stories by Margaret Wise Brown called The Scarecrow Boy.  In the story the little boy scarecrow wants to be a real scarecrow like his Dad.  One day he decides to run away and try to scare the crows in the cornfield all by himself.  He makes six different faces at the crow to try to scare it away!  As we read the story the children showed me their six scariest faces too!  Pretty scary!

Then they made their own scarecrow faces to go with the story.  Take a look!

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We also make these delicious scarecrow faces.  Most of the students liked all or at least part of the dish!  Delicious!

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We also made scarecrow books with our buddies.  They helped us cut and color them and put them together.  The big buddies helped the little buddies practice reading them, too!

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I introduced an new app on the iPads to the children that focuses on learning the beginning sight words we are currently learning.  It is called Word Bingo.

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You can find it on the ABC Ya! website as well.  I like the version for the iPad!

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We are currently working on the PrePrimer Dolch word list.  It has some additional games and a spelling practice component as well.

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Take a look!  You can also find this game on our classroom WIKI page at the top of the screen.  Just follow the links!

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Thanksgiving Turkey Fun!

IMG_0797Happy Thanksgiving!  We had a great time on Friday making these little turkeys!  I did a quick demo and then the children each created their own!  Each turkey seemed to have its own personality!  

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IMG_2198They each picked out a pine cone, tried out where to put their leaf tail feathers, and then created their turkeys!  The children really seemed to enjoy making them!  

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We also make a little poem about what we are thankful for!  The children came up with some awesome ideas!  I will try to post some of these next week!  Forgot to take pictures of them!

The children seemed to really enjoy making their fall booklets. They did an excellent job matching the pictures to the sentences using  some of the reading strategies we have been using thus far!

IMG_2195Then they completed their own little book matching the pictures to the correct page.

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We collected the pages into a little book and then decorated it with some stickers!  Love those peel and stick foam stickers!

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I hope they got a chance to read them with you!  We have been focusing on the color words, and simple sight words, beginning and ending sounds, and using the pictures to help figure out new words thus far.  Hopefully they can read all or some of the words or pages to you all by themselves!

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Fall Fun!

IMG_2157We have been working on colour words and learning about fall.  One of the stories in one of our books has a story about hiding in the leaves.  I found some awesome leaf stamps a few years ago and we used them to make these neat leaf piles and practise our colour words at the same time!  Can you see the little face hiding in the leaf pile?

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We made these turkey magnets with our Big Buddies!  You can tell they are turkeys, right?

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I love these flowers made with pattern blocks.

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