Category Archives: iPads

Fun with the Snowman Project!

We have been working hard creating our Snowman books on the iPad!  We have the first few finished projects to share with you!  We hope you enjoy reading and viewing them as much as we have enjoyed creating them!

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The initial sparks for the projects are the amazing snowmen that were created at home by the students with their families!

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They are fabulous!   To set the stage, we read the story The Snowman by Lois Elbert.  It is a great story about how a family saves up a variety of materials to decorate their snowmen.

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I sent home the template with the children and several weeks later these wonderful  snowmen returned to our classroom!

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Then we started to compile a book on the iPads about the snowmen.  The first page of the book contains a photograph taken on the iPad of their snowmen.

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The children opened a project on the app Explain Everything and imported the picture of their snowman from the camera roll.  Then they added the title and their name using the text feature.

The children created an additional four pages to their books.

On one page. they had to draw a snowman and then label the snowman using the text feature.

We made one page about what they thought their snowman might like to eat.  They had to draw the plate with the items on the plate and label it once again.

The new feature to our snowmen books this year is on the fourth page!  It is a new favorite of mine!  The Explain Everything app allows you to record every stroke you make as you draw it and narrate your drawing as you build your picture.  I thought it would be interesting to have the children describe or teach how to build a snowman.  I think you will really enjoy them.  I know I can’t watch them without smiling!

The last page is, of course, about the author!  The children had to draw a picture of themselves and then add a few sentences about themselves.

The final step was to create a script for the first page describing the snowman.  The children had to complete a few sentences describing their snowman and their favorite parts of the project!

Then we had to have the children record their script on the first page of their book as well as adding a comment or reading their work on each of the pages of their book.  Then we saved the book to the camera roll as a video within the Explain Everything app.  Love, love, love this app!

Then I was able to upload the video on the camera roll to Youtube and import it into the blog so that you can see it.  I think I will also create a QR code for the video when we have completed them.  You know you have a group of students who love technology when they ask you to turn everything into a QR code!

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Filed under Explain Everything, iPads, QR codes, Snowman iPad Project Movies!, Snowman Project, Winter, Youtube

100 Day Fun!

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We celebrated our 100th Day of school last week!  Take a look at this yummy cake!  Thank you to Owen’s family for the cake! To celebrate our 100th day of school we did a variety of activities that focused on 100.  We read 100 stories together!  The children got together as partners and in some cases groups of three and read stories to each other.  Each time they read a little book or story they had to write the title down on a post-it note and sign their names.  Then we put them up on a chart.  We actually read 104 stories!

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It was lots of fun to watch them reading so many stories!

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 I think they had lots of fun reading together!

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We also made 100 day necklaces out of fruit loops!  Yummy!

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We also made 100 trail mix!

The children counted out 10 of each type of fun food and sorted them on their 100 day place mat.

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Then they ate them up!

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We worked with our buddies to create our 100 year old stories!  I found an app called the Aging Booth that takes a picture and ages the person in the picture by 100 years.  I wish you could have heard the giggles when we shared the pictures.  The Big Buddies came and helped the students complete the activity about when they were 100 years old.  IMG_1558

 Can you guess who these handsome gentlemen are?

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We used the app to age our big buddies as well!  Then we shared our 100 cupcakes with our buddies!  Thank you to Kalem’s family for the 100 little cupcakes.  They even had the numbers 1 to 100 on them!

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 That’s a lot of cupcakes!

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Filed under 100 Day, iPads

More Fun with Augmented Reality Dinosaur Movies!

Here are a few more of our dinosaur books!  I am very impressed with these books as the children used a few different apps to create them.  They were actually “app-smashing”!  When you use a variety of different apps to create your projects and put them together to create something entirely new it is called app smashing!

They took the pictures they created using the Walking with Dinosaurs app and imported them into the My Story app.   This is a multi-step process!  First, they have to take the picture in Walking with Dinosaurs which involved choosing their dinosaur, resizing it to fit the picture, choosing what they wanted their dinosaur to do and then taking the picture!

Then they had to save it to the camera roll, open My Story, choose to import a picture, find their picture in the camera roll, import it into the page, re-size the picture to fit the page, and then add the text to match the picture.   Then they repeated the steps for four more pages!

Then they added text and recorded their voices reading their stories!

Very proud of my Grade Ones!

After they were finished I saved their story as a movie and uploaded it to Youtube.

Then I loaded the URRL code into this blog post and voila!  Augmented reality dinosaur stories!  Enjoy!

More stories coming your way soon!

 

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Filed under Augmented Reality, Dinosaurs, iPads, My Story, Walking with Dinosaurs, Youtube

AR Dinosaur Movie Fun!

We have been having a great time with the Walking with Dinosaurs app and the My Story app this week!  Today we put all of our work together to create these awesome books!  The children had to take pictures of their favourite dinosaurs within the Walking with Dinosaurs app first.  This is the first time that the children had the opportunity to take pictures by themselves using the iPads this year in class.  They also had to postion their chosen augmented image of the dinosaur in the picture before they could take the picture.

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The children had to make at least four pictures to make their books first.

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They had to figure out what they wanted to have their dinosaur doing in their story and then take a picture of the dinosaur doing it!

Then they opened up the My Story app and imported their pictures from the camera roll to each page of their book.  As usual, they were absolutely fearless!  They didn’t even bat an eye and just jumped right in and created these amazing books!

When they imported their pictures they had to position the picture on the page.  Then they added text to their page.  After they completed their pages, the students went to our “recording studio” to record their stories.  ( We found them a little quiet spot for them to record their stories.)  After a few of them had recorded their stories they became the experts that helped their classmates complete their recordings!  I had a lot of eager helpers!

The My Story app is a great little app that just got even better.  With the last update I made I discovered that it now has several new ways to share the stories you can create.  The best option for our class is the option to share the book as a movie.  We were able to share each book as a movie, open it in iMovie and save it to the camera roll.  Then you can take the movie and upload it to Youtube.  We think we have uploaded the first book made using pictures created with Walking with Dinosaurs app!  The children had a great time creating these books and were awesome about helping each other figure things out!

I have a lot of eager students who are very keen to have their books uploaded to Youtube for the world to see!  I managed to get these ones up today!  Please watch for the others coming soon!

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Filed under Augmented Reality, iPads, My Story, Walking with Dinosaurs, Youtube

AR Dinosaur Fun!

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We have been having a lot of fun with the Walking with Dinosaurs app.  This is a really cool augmented reality app that lets us pose with an augmented image of a variety of dinosaurs.  We use the photo booth section of the app to create these life like images!  The children choose the dinosaur they wish to pose with and what they want to act out.  Then I take a picture of them with the dinosaur superimposed on the picture. It looks real, doesn’t it!

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We used these pictures to create a movie trailer about “The Day the Dinosaurs came to School” using the iMovie app.  The children had a really good time helping me with the captions for the movie trailer.  It was a great taking off point for a creative writing exercise about what happened with “their dinosaur”!  They did a great job!

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Then  I used the Aurasma app to attach the iMovie trailer to their story.  I put the trigger image for the movie on their writing paper.

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The Aurasma app allows me to attach a video to a trigger image.  The trigger image I choose is the little triceratops on the picture.  When they hover the iPad over the image it triggers the iMovie trailer to open and play!  Please come in and ask to view it with one of our iPads.

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I will also be sending the trigger picture home in the next few days as well as the directions to view the image at home.  You will need to download the Aurasma app on your device.  This app is free at this time.    To view the trailer you need the link and the trigger image as I have not placed it on our public channel.  We used this app earlier this year for our At My School book we created on the iPad.

We have been having a great time with a new app called Chatterpix.  I used this app to create this little video!  You can add your voice and animate the picture to appear as if the picture is talking with this app.  Lots and lots of giggles with this one.

We have been slowly having the children take turns animating their dinosaur pictures using this app.  The children have to decide who will do the talking in their video.  Then they mark the mouth on their picture and start recording!  It is not easy to think of what your character will say for thirty seconds!   I have been attaching the videos to each  of their dinosaur pictures using the Aurasma app.  The Dinosaur stories will have two trigger images.  The dinosaur for the dinosaur movie and the picture of them and their dinosaur for their Chatterpix video.  Definitely a fun app with lots of possibilities!

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Filed under Augmented Reality, Aurasma, Chatterpix, Dinosaurs, iMovies, iPads, Walking with Dinosaurs

Fun with Penguins!

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We have started our unit on Penguins!

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We have penguins everywhere!

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Over the last few weeks we have watched the penguins on the live webcam at the Vancouver Aquarium.  Very cool!  The penguins here are watching their keeper clean up their enclosure.  He even reached down to pet one of the little penguins.  Very cute!  You can find the link to the webcam here.

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We also watched bit of the webcam from Seaworld in Orlando.  You can find the link for this webcam here.  These guys are really noisy!

We read some non-fiction books about penguins!  We learned a lot of interesting facts. Did you know that penguins like to surf?

Then we did a penguin research report.  First, we read the facts and decided which category would be the best for each fact.  Our four categories were:  What They Look Like, What They Eat, About the Babies, and Cool Facts!  Then we coded the facts with the beginning letter for each category and the children glued the facts to the corresponding page.

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We turned our report into a penguin!

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We have also created a QR code for the Vancouver Aquarium webcam that we have attached to our penguin reports.

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 If you have a QR code reader on your phone come on in and try it out!  It’s a lot of fun!

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It seems a bit like magic to point the iPad at a little box and have penguins appear!  Too much fun!

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Filed under iPads, Penguins, QR codes, Webcams

Fun with Words!

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We have been having fun making sentences!  The children love making sentences on the Promethean Board.

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Thank you to everyone who sent me their sentences using the word banks that were sent home!  The pictures are awesome and the sentences are fantastic!

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 Here are just a few samples!  I have a lot more and will post them over the next little while!

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This is a neat idea from Evan’s family that I have to share!  They made flashcards of all the Pre-Primer Dolch words and put them on his bedroom ceiling.  Then Evan used his flashlight to find words to read!  Too much fun!  I think I will try it with our next word list in the classroom!

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We have been working with a variety of word recognition apps in the classroom.  One of my favorites is Montesorri Words.  T

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The children have to spell the word to match the picture by dragging the appropriate letters to fill the boxes.  It has several levels of difficulty ranging from simple three and four letter words to more complicated crossword puzzles.  The children really like it because it rewards each correct answer with a fun page that lets them move a variety of images around the screen.

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The other word recognition app we have been using a lot is Word Bingo.

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This is a great little app that lets the children practice the Dolch word lists.  There is a bingo component and a spelling component.

IMG_0014You can also find this game on the ABC Ya! site.  We have a link to the game on our classroom WIKI!

We have been working on learning to print our numbers and letters correctly.  Guess what!  There is an app for that!  My favorite one is called Letter School.  This is a very popular app.  The animations are amazing.  My favorite one is the lawnmower!

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It is fun to listen to the children giggle at the animations.  It is really fun when I attach the iPad to our Promethean board!  They love the one with the fuse!  It looks like it blows up and shakes the whole screen.  Learning how to print can be lots of fun!

 

 

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Filed under iPads, Letter School, Promethean Board

Scarecrow Day Fun!

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 We had a great time on Scarecrow Day!  We read an awesome story by Margaret Wise Brown called The Little Scarecrow Boy.  This story is about a little boy who wants to scare crows just like his Dad.  He learns to make very scary scarecrow faces and goes out to try to scare away some crows.  We made our own version of the story.  The children made six different pictures of scary scarecrow faces that they were able to slide through the scarecrow face and retell the story.  I was so proud of these guys who sat down together to share their books with each other.  They did a great job reading their books!

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There were a lot of scary scarecrow faces.  They worked very hard on their books!

 

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We also learned about a new app on the iPad called Doodle Buddy.  This is a really superb app that we will be using a great deal!  The children experimented with the drawing tools to make scarecrows.  I demonstrated the app using our new Promethean Board.  I can attach the iPad to the board with a special cable and the screen is projected on the board.  It was cute because the children didn’t initially understand that I was drawing the picture on the iPad and they thought that the board was drawing the picture!  Eventually they caught on and then I had the students take over the demonstration!

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We also did some scarecrow cooking.  We made scarecrow faces and ate them up.  The children decorated a rice cake using cream cheese as the “glue” to put the features on the rice cake.  They used red pepper for the smile, a carrot for the nose, celery for the eyebrows, banana slices and craisins for the eyes, and alfalfa sprouts for the hair.  Most of the children enjoyed this yummy treat or at least some parts of it!  Many thanks to Carter B.’s mom for helping to supervise this activity!

We also made another scarecrow book, made some scarecrow art, and learned to do the scarecrow dance! (the chicken dance)  It was fun to dress up for the day!  We took lots of pictures to share with you!  Lots of fun and lots of learning too!

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Filed under Doodle Buddy, iPads, Promethean Board, Scarecrows

Happy Halloween Fun!

 

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We made these special bat poems!  We learned about a lot of different kinds of bats.  The children completed a poem about bats with their favorite types of bats.  We watched a really cool National Geographic Kids video about the flying fox bat. Take a look!

The students have been creating additional Popplets on the iPads!  Here are a few more examples!  Many thanks to Abrielle’s Mom who  for helping the students with this project!

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We also had a lot of fun creating these count-up Haunted House stories.  The children chose from a variety of Halloween foam stickers and created their own count-up story to match the haunted house!  They did a great job!

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We had a lovely time on Halloween!  Thank you to all the parents who were able to help with this round of stations!

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I hope the Dracula/Mummy cans were not too noisy!  The children really enjoyed them!  I have a group shot of all of them making the noise together and a video too!  We are using the clips to make a special project that I will send home to you soon!

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Mr. Brick alias the Minion came to dance with us in the morning to the Happy Song!  Too much fun!

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Definitely a Happy Halloween!

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Filed under Bats, Halloween, iPads, Popplet

Halloween Popplet Fun! CoLAR Pumpkin Fun Too!

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We have been having some Halloween fun using a new app for us called Popplet!.  The children have been working in partners to create an idea web about Halloween.

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I created a folder of Halloween clipart for the students to choose from on my iPad.  Then they created their Popplet by importing the images from the camera roll into their popplets and adding text to the pooplet using the words on the word walls and pocket charts in the classroom.

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The children are making them in partners and we will post more of their efforts as soon as they are ready!  I love how fearless they are when it comes to technology!

We have also been having more fun with the CoLAR app and the pumpkin trigger picture.

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I incorporated the image into a writing exercise.  We brainstormed some ideas about the dancing pumpkins and the children chose their favorites to add to the story prompt.

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After the students wrote down their ideas and colored the pictures we used the iPads to activiate the trigger picture.  Lots of giggles and fun!

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Filed under Augmented Reality, coLAR, Halloween, iPads, Popplet