Tag Archives: Snowmen

February 3, 2013 · 6:19 pm

Here come the Snowmen! And the Penguins!

The snowman project is my favourite project of the year! The snowmen are absolutely fantastic! Thank you for supporting this project with such enthusiasm!

They are all so different and it looks like you had some fun making them! These are just a few of them. I hope to create a gallery online of all of them!

We are using the snowmen as a jumping off point for some writing we will be doing. We are compiling some pages together to make each snowman’s story!

We will be using My Story and Doodle Buddy to create the pages for the books!

We have already made the diagram page using Doodle Buddy! I love the detail and the colours! The children just love drawing using the iPads.

We have also been working on a small mini unit about penguins. After reading several books about penguins and watching the penguin video on Tumblebooks we working on a penguin research project.

We sorted a set of facts that I have compiled for them into four different groups. Then the children cut them out and glued them to the appropriate category page. This is the result! The children are quite proud of them!

We are starting to work on place value. We used the iPads and the app Doodle Buddy to learn about making 100 things. The children had to make ten sets of ten different stamps using the stamp tool.

They had a lot of fun and it was a great way of reinforcing the idea of ten sets of ten!

We have been learning a lot of different strategies to use to add. The most recent strategy has been using the number line. The children have learned to count on from the biggest number with counters and now they are using the number line to count on. They like that it is much quicker! I have introduced the app Math Bingo.

It is a great app that allows them to practise their number facts in a fun way. So far, we have only used the addition facts. However this app lets them practise addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. So this app could be good for big brother or sister too! You can also find it on ABCYah! You can see that they use their number line to help them figure out the answers! Eventually, they will know them by memory with enough practise!

We have also been working with some fun new counters playing Add It Up! Everyone makes a story on their workspace and then they go around and solve their friend’s stories.

Here’s another one of the snowmen! Aren’t they great!

Counting Snowmen and Snowflakes!

Over the past week or so we have been continuing to work on our Winter theme. We have really been having fun with snowmen! Some of the snowmen for our snowmen project have been coming in and they are fabulous! We will be incorporating them into a writing project that we are creating with the iPads. One of the first things we have done is to draw diagrams of snowmen using Doodle Buddy on the iPads!

The children first have to draw the snowmen and then learn how to use text boxes to label them. Quite an operation! The children have to learn how to create text boxes, add text, and then move the text box to the correct spot to label the picture. Then we take a screen shot of their product so that we can use it in our book project!

The children have also been working on the app My Story to create a “how to” book on How to Make a Snowman. We learned how to create a story board to show what we wanted to create and what needed to be incorporated into each page. Almost all of the children have completed the books and I hope to email them to you this week as soon as they are done! We had some help figuring out why we couldn’t email them which was really appreciated! Thanks, Ryan!

We also created a snowman flip book that is in the final stages of completion and should make it home to you shortly! They did a fabulous job! Four snowmen turn into many, many snowmen with three cuts! They had a good giggle at all the different snowmen they could create!

We also made a little mini book about snowflakes to practise learning about plurals!

During silent reading time we have been using the iPads! On Friday, the children used the app The Monster at the End of this Book which is a fantastic little app. I never get tired of it and it was a treat to listen to all the giggles when the children were viewing the book. I like this app because it highlights each word as it is being read to the child. We use our headphones during silent reading time so all I can hear is the giggles! You can see that they are spellbound by the story!

Sharing Time!

Yesterday was the last day of Project iPad! To celebrate our journey we hosted an open house for our parents. We had a stellar turnout! Lots of parents and even grandparents came to see our project and we had a great time sharing our learning with them!

The children have worked hard on a Pictello book about the snowman they created with their families. The books are very cool but what really makes them special is that each child narrated their own stories. Listening to them read their stories themselves always brings a smile… I have managed to load all the stories onto the Pictello server. I will be emailing the corresponding codes as soon as possible. If you have an iPad and the Pictello app loaded on your ipad you will be able to download your child’s story and keep it! I have also downloaded a PDF file for each book that will be going out via email as soon as possible. Unfortunately the audio component is not part of this file. But you will still have all the pages for the book! It takes a little time to copy in all those email addresses so please be patient!

To begin our celebration we viewed a little movie that I was able to create on a neat product called PhotoStory3. This program lets you take the photographs that you have taken and put them all together into a slide show. You can add comments and put it all to music for a really cool finished product. I had used it before for our school mural project so this time I found it a little easier to put together. Not such a steep learning curve this time! The children loved seeing all their projects and it was fun listening to their reactions as they took a trip down memory lane! Apparently it is possible to email the photostory. I will have to try that!

Then the children shared their stories with their parents. I hope they enjoyed them as much as I did! Then the children taught their parents how to use the iPads. We gave the parents the snowman labelling project to attempt. They were great students!! Here are some of their attempts! I had so many neat snowmen that I will have to save some for future posts!

The children also got to share their favourite apps with their parents. It is difficult to decide which one would be their favourite. They certainly seemed to enjoy them all!

We also repeated our buddy picture project with the parents. The parents and students took a picture of themselves using the camera. Then they imported the picture into the Puzzlemaker app, created a puzzle using that image, and then proceeded to complete the puzzle.

The forty five minute long Open House time just flew by! I would like to thank the parents and extended families for coming! There were lots of adults so every child got to share their story with someone and no one felt left out! I know it is very difficult to come in the middle of the day to an event. Please know that it was greatly appreciated by both the students and myself!

After school I had to drop the iPads off so that they could move on to the next lucky school… What a great experience we had with them! I know that we will really miss them.

I am hoping to continue to explore the use of the iPad in the classroom albeit on a significantly smaller scale! We will continue to try to find ways to use it in the classroom and hopefully continue to share these efforts on our blog…. So please stay tuned!