Monthly Archives: April 2014

April 28, 2014 · 9:01 pm

Furry Fun Plus iPad Fun!

Last week we had a wonderful field trip to the vet clinic! We got a tour of the vet clinic and even got to listen to this dog’s heart beat!

This lovely dog let everyone listen to her heartbeat.

Sometimes two students at a time! So gentle!

This is the outfit you need to put on before you can take an x-ray of your pet! It was surprisingly heavy!

Looking at the x-rays of the animals was really interesting.

We even had one student get suited up for surgery! Can you guess who?

This teddy bear is laying on a special pad that keeps it warm during surgery!

When I asked the children to tell me their favorite part of the trip most of them said, “All of it!”

Last week the district set of iPads was delivered to our school and we have been having a great time creating books and pictures with them. We have also been practicing a variety of math and reading skills with some really neat apps.

Montesorri Words is a great app that works on spelling words. It begins with simple three and four letter words and progresses to more difficult words and crossword activities. After each correct answer the student is rewarded with an interesting animation. They love it!

We have also played Chicktionary. The students are given 8 letters and encouraged to see how many words they can create using the letters. You gain points for each word you find! We played this game with our Big Buddies on Friday! I think one group got 7200 points!

We also had some fun creating space pictures using Doodle Buddy!

Doodle Buddy is an awesome little app and we have also been using it and Strip Designer to make math stories! More on that next post! Here is a sneak peak!

$math 1$

$math book 3$

Pretty cool!

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Filed under Doodle Buddy, iPads, Space, Vet Field trip

Tagged as chicktionary, Doodle Buddy projects, ipads, montesorri words, space

April 16, 2014 · 8:06 pm

Fun with Peter Rabbit and Friends!

A couple of years ago I discovered that even Peter Rabbit has an app! I downloaded the app from the official Peter Rabbit site and shared it with my students last year. This year it was as big a hit as it was in the last two years.

The coloring pages are fun because you can use a magic paintbrush and it paints it in “Beatrix Potter” colors!

You can have the story read to you or you can choose to read it yourself. There are a variety of games and activities that the children can do and all have the lovely Beatrix Potter colors and illustrations!

I also showed them the app called PopOut Peter. It has a jigsaw puzzle feature that I really enjoy. I think both of the apps might become favourites!

We have been doing a lot of different things with rabbits.

We did a mini research report about rabbits where the children had to read a variety of facts about rabbits and sort and categorize them into different categories! We turned it all into a rabbit shaped report!

Today, we read one of my favourite stories by Margaret Wise Brown called Home for a Bunny! Then the children retold the story using a story map. They sequenced the story parts and had a great time illustrating their story!

We also made some BooBoo bunnies! They will be coming home tomorrow as we didn’t quite get everyone’s bunny finished. So the bunnies are having a sleepover at school! Hope they don’t get up to too much mischief!

We also participated in the annual Easter Egg hunt and had to race the crows to find all the eggs.

We watched one crow pick up an egg and fly away with it right in front of us! What would the Easter bunny think?

We also had a real bunny called Honey Bunny come visit! What a great bunny! So gentle!

Honey Bunny hopped around the carpet visiting the children and was willing to be petted by everyone! Definitely a Honey Bunny!

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Filed under iPads, Peter Rabbit, Rabbits and Bunnies

Tagged as bunnies, ipads, Peter Rabbit, rabbits, story maps

April 7, 2014 · 9:29 pm

Fun with Boxes!

It beginning to feel a lot like Christmas, especially in our class!

The first box from the Mind Share Learning Video Challenge contest arrived last week! Inside was an amazing new Epson PowerLite 96W WXGA 3LCD Projector! Very cool!

You can see from the pictures that the children were very excited! It definitely got a two thumbs up vote! They actually liked all parts of the prize package as they even wanted to have the box!

I told them that I was sure they could have the box too!

We have been working on a variety of projects!

We are continuing to work on the pages for our snowman projects. We will be compiling them into a special format very soon!

We are using a variety of different apps to create the pages to make our books about the snowmen.

We are taking pictures of all the snowmen and labeling them using the Doodle Buddy app!

The children have been working on pages describing their snowman’s favourite meals to add to their books.

And we have been working on the author/illustrator page!

I am very impressed at how well the children can put together the pages using a variety of apps! Very cool!

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Filed under Doodle Buddy, iPads, Mind Share Learning Video Challenge, Prizes, Snowman Project

Tagged as Doodle Buddy projects, ipads, mind share learning video Challenge prizes, Snowmen Project

April 6, 2014 · 1:29 pm

Writing to Mars and Spacecraft AR Style!

We have been having a lot of fun with a variety of apps I have found about space. This one has become a favourite! It is another Augmented Reality app called Spacecraft 3D. This is an app from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology.

You download a marker and then place the iPad over the marker and this lovely 3D image appears. The best part is that you can take your picture with it! There are 13 different spacecraft that you can view including the Curiosity and Hubble telescope!

There are animations and information about each of the spacecraft!

We had fun looking at the spacecraft and choosing which one we wanted to have a picture with. The children then posed with the image and these are some of the cool results.

We also watched this video about the Curiosity landing on Mars! The graphics are amazing and the children were completely captivated. There were some great explanations of how everything was created just for this spacecraft!

While we were learning about the Curiosity spacecraft I found a cool NASA website that focused on the Mars expeditions. There are a lot of cool links on the site including one that lets you send a postcard to the Curiosity spacecraft on Mars! Too cool! Of course, we had to send a postcard!

If you would like to send your own postcard to Mars I have added a link for the postcard site on our class WIKI page in the Science section!

Another app we have had some fun with is called Space Journey. I love this app! It lets you choose a planet and then see it in relation to its place in the solar system!

You can pick from any of the planets in our solar system and then see it in space in relation to the other planets and the sun. Of course we had to try them all!