May 26, 2013 · 6:40 pm

Frog and Toad Friendship Fun!

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We had a Frog and Toad day last week!  I love the Frog and Toad stories for many reasons!  I love the stories, the theme behind the stories, the exploration of characters, and the fact that they are written for children to read and they are well written!  The basic theme of the stories is about friendship.  They also deal with characteristics of people.  Frog is an optimist who generally looks for the positive and Toad is, well, a bit grumpy…  Frog always wins him over and Toad is a grateful friend.  We just read one of the books in the series called Frog and Toad are Friends.  There are several stories in this book.  We had a hard time choosing our favourite.  We either liked them all or we liked the story The Lost Button or The Letter.  All of them are great examples of being a friend.  We made a story map about the The Lost Button story.  The children did a great job!  Take a look!

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I love all the detail!  We tried to add the buttons that they found too!

closeup of frog origami

 

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We made origami frogs to “act” out the story map.  When you stroke them on their backs, they hop!

So then, of course, we had to have a race!

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Ready, set, hop!

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Another one of our frog life cycles!  We are almost done!  Have to find a way to present them all at once for you to see!  Researching……

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May 21, 2013 · 6:32 pm

Deep Sea Fun!

Today we learned about a very special submersible!  Lars’ Dad, Mr. Bulman came in to show us some cool pictures of the submersible that went to the bottom of the Mariana Trench That’s the deepest part of the ocean which is seven miles deep!   This is the submersible piloted by James Cameron in the DeepSea Challenge project.   Mr. Bulman told us all about how the submersible was built!  Very cool!

Lars’ Dad worked on the communication systems on the submersible.  We learned about how hard it was to communicate with the sub because it went down so deep!  We counted to see how long it would take before we would be able to hear what Mr. Cameron said and how long it would take for him to hear us back if we were listening to the conversation!  Mr. Bulman told us about the sound waves and how they used them to keep track of the submersible.

It was really interesting to see how the submersible was built and how hard everyone worked to built it.  The children were very impressed with the fact that the team worked 18 hour days at times and sometimes even longer than that! We learned about how small the space was that Mr. Cameron had to sit in and tried to imagine what that would be like! Lars’ Mom helped us understand about how much pressure was on the outside of the submersible pushing in!  We learned a lot!  Later, during eat and read time we watched some videos about the project.  Take a look!

Last week we were learning about Chris Hadfield and the International Space Station and this week we are learning about the wonders of the deep ocean!  Too cool!

Take a look at the work one student brought to me about Chris Hadield.  She had her mom scribe for her and wrote down all the neat things she had learned about Chris Hadfield and even downloaded some pictures to share!  I am sure that Chris Hadfield would be impressed if he could see it!

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Too cool!

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May 20, 2013 · 9:17 pm

We Are Dancing!

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I love to surf to find new ideas on the net.  I found a great site recently at one of my favourite teacher sites.  He is a kindergarten teacher named MattbGomez and he has a great site.  He created these Symbaloo sites of his favourite dance video using a safeshare version.   I can go to his Symbaloo site and just click on the dance video we want to do and we have a great exercise break that everyone enjoys! I am going to have to figure out how to use Symbaloo!

Barbara Ann is one of our favourites!

I like to use this site because the videos have been filtered through safeshare.  I love the JustDance Kids videos!  I have a lot of favourites!

Anybody want to dance?  

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May 11, 2013 · 4:42 pm

Something to Tweet About!

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A week ago we made a twitter board with our buddy class!  They had created a twitter bulletin board with “tweets” about something they wanted to share!  Really interesting to read and find out about what’s important to them right now!  So they showed us how to do it!

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The children are writing on their own personal strip each week and sharing something important to them!  An upscale “show and tell”!  The bulletin board “twitter board” lets each child share their important moments.

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I have been researching class twitter boards and decided to take the plunge this week!  We now have our own Twitter account.  It is a protected account.  That means that to post to the account I must approve the comment.  That protects us from posts that are not appropriate.  The blog posts are also posted on the Twitter account!

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We tweeted to Chris Hadfield to let him know that we enjoyed his videos about life on the space station.  We also tweeted to another class that has a Twitter account.  There are some really neat uses of Twitter that we will be exploring in the future.

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The children are continuing to create their  frog life cycle pages on the iPad using the images that I have downloaded for them and Strip Designer.  When they are complete I will figure out some way to share them with you!  Here is another sample that is complete!  Love the Hello and Boing!

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We did a research project on frogs this week!  The children had to sort facts about frogs into four different categories.  We read them and decided which category fit the best.  I was so proud of their reading.  Some of the words were hard!

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They did a great job!  We are collating all our frog stuff into a frog folder!

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May 6, 2013 · 10:40 pm

Wacky Water Fun! Space Age Style!

Ever wonder what it would be like to eat dessert in space with zero gravity! Take a look!

Today was very special because we got to watch Chris Hadfield, our astronaut at the International Space Station sing in real time!  We tried to watch the live link from the Space Station but we experienced some technical difficulties.  So we got bits and pieces at a time but it was still live!  Imagine that!  Really cool to watch and realize that Commander Hadfield was singing with thousands of children in a live concert from space!  We ended up watching the cool videos he has been creating about his experiments in space.  One of the really cool ones was about that happens to water in space.  Take a look!

So in science today we did an experiment about surface tension and water too!

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Take a look! I bet you were wondering about the string that got sent home today!

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Now you can try!  It’s hard to believe that the water stays on the string, isn’t it!  Now imagine how cool the water behaves at the space station!  

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May 5, 2013 · 4:38 pm

Frog Fun!

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We have been working on life cycles over the last little while.  Right now we are learning about frogs!  Today, we started making a digital image of the frog’s life cycle using the iPads.  I googled frog images and then saved them on the iPad.  Of course, the iPad makes it super easy to download images!  I had read about it and tried it today and it is so neat!  Thank you to MattBGomez.com for the tutorial.  He had done it with his kindergarten students using the butterfly cycle and the Story Buddy 2 app.  You just pick the image you want, tap on the image, and then hold you finger on it and a popup will appear inviting you to save the image.  It saves to the camera roll.  Once it is on the camera roll we can do lots of things with it! The possibilities are endless!  I showed the children the images I had been able to capture and then we imported them into Strip Designer to make a pictorial image of the frog’s life cycle.  Then we added the words!  One demonstration and then off they went in pairs!

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We have also been able to watch some really neat videos created by the National Geographic about frogs.  This one is about the Strawberry Poison Dart frog!

The children have also been exploring the Storybook Maker app and it is amazing what they have produced.  I am trying to figure out away to upload a book to the blog so that you can see!

They love using the camera on the iPad to take pictures.  Even the caterpillar that was brought for Show and Tell starred in a book!

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April 18, 2013 · 8:45 pm

Tell Me a Story!

book bunnyI 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!

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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”.

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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. 

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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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April 10, 2013 · 9:48 pm

Blogging Fun!

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

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

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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!

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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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April 8, 2013 · 9:38 pm

Raindrops and Letter School!

IMG_1722We 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” !

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

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

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

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

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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!  

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 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!

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

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April 3, 2013 · 9:14 pm

An App for Peter Rabbit!

IMG_0221It’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!

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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! IMG_0040

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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