Posts Tagged ‘Halloween’

Kinder Meets Book Creator

I’ve never started making books so early in the year with our kindergarteners but, as Book Creator was perfect for what I wanted to do with them, I was eager to give it a try. My challenge was:  Have our littlest ones illustrate AND record using an app they had never seen before, all in a 30 minute session!   Challenges don’t scare me! Although, I have to admit, I did warn the teachers that I had no idea how this would turn out!

I’ll just say, children never cease to amaze me! These young students did a fabulous job in their creations and I am very proud of all that they accomplished! Here’s what we did . . .

I came across the book, I Need My Monster, by Amanda Noll. It’s about a child who creates a “comfortable” monster that lived under his bed; one that helps him overcome his fears. One day, the boy discovers a note from his monster saying that he’d gone fishing and would be back in a week. The little boy goes through a series of “substitute” monsters before his returns.

I thought the story would be perfect for a class book about silly monsters and how we wish they might help us. With only 30 minutes with students, it was important to do as much preparation as possible before class. Since we have shared iPads, I created a template and airdropped to each of our iPads, one for each class. Often, I’ll go ahead and add each child’s name to the name of the book but this time I color-coded the books so that each student just had to find the color of the “name” box that matched their class. For example, Mrs. Monroe’s class looked for the green box.

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Halloween Collages

Pic Collage Kids

I came across a fun idea a few days ago that would be a great way to introduce the Pic Collage Kids app to our first graders. Spooky Good Costumes is a cute way to introduce students to several of the tools in an app that is useful across the curriculum.

First, why Pic Collage Kids ($1.99) rather than Pic Collage (free with in-app purchases)? Both have the same interface but there are two very important reasons why I prefer Pic Collage Kids.

  1. The kids app is rated 4+  while the otheris12+. This is a huge help inavoiding the inappropriate “stickers” and images that sometimes pop up on Pic Collage.
  2. Even though there is a charge for Pic Collage Kids, it is not that much considering that there are LOTS of free stickers that come with the app. And, younger children LOVE stickers!!

If you want a more detailed comparison of the two, click here.

Back to the project . . . I followed the instructions from the above blog post and, let me tell you, those first graders did a fantastic job! I told one class that we had only 40 minutes to do something that should normally take twice that long.

We opened the app and students had one minute to take a selfie. Really, if you give them longer, they can’t ever seem to take the “perfect” photo and they end up taking way too many!

I was a little worried about the clip tool – would it take too long to “cut” around the head, taking out the background? The kids absolutely loved this! They had so much fun cutting without scissors!

What concentration!

Look at our heads!

Next step – showing the tools for drawing (doodle), changing the background, and  adding fun stickers. Students were asked to use stickers to create their name.

I love these letter stickers for a Halloween collage. I did impose a limit of 5 stickers (excluding the name). Otherwise, there’s a temptation to cover the page with every sticker available!

There was lots of concentration as the students created their collages.

As the students completed their drawings, they airdropped them to me. The first couple of children who finished became “tech helpers” and were they fantastic (not to mention, proud!).

Here’s the animoto video of the costumed first graders. Enjoy! 

Celebrating Gump Day 2014

What is Gump Day? Another name for Halloween! Years ago, we had a teacher at TVS who loved to dress up. Our Halloween celebration was named after her and the Gump Day tradition began. It is a BIG deal at our school with teachers and students alike dressing up. (There is fierce competition amongst teachers in the costume contest!)

Here is a glimpse of our celebration: