Pondering Ideas From Others

I love July.  I am so glad that we still have some beautiful summer days left.  I always like to catch up on what's trending in education by reading lots of different blog posts.  I'm sharing interesting thoughts of others today.


Here is a great blog post about tips for how to have a stress-free year.
http://blog.teachersnotebook.com/general/some-summer-advice-for-a-less-stressful-school-year/

21^st century skills.....Anne Shaw writes an excellent article on Technology in Schools.  Technology is not just having all of the devices......it's really more than that.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/real-21st-century-school-please-stand-up-anne-shaw?trk=mp-reader-card

It's all about technology at ISTE.....Read about the best tools in ed tech here.

https://www.iste.org/explore/articleDetail?articleid=495&category=Innovator-solutions&article=The+best+tools+in+ed+tech&utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=EdTekHub

Love these Project ideas from ISTE......PBL is where it's at:

https://www.iste.org/explore/articleDetail?articleid=429&category=In-the-classroom&article&utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=ProjectReimaginED

Connecting kids with nature.....a lost art

http://www.childrenandnature.org/2015/07/20/time-for-a-camp-revival-the-return-of-nature-camps-and-the-support-for-those-that-never-went-away/

My Favorite App

Nutshell Camera
I love love love this app.  It is a video app.  You take a picture and that starts the video.  Then you take a second picture.  It continues to video tape.  Lastly, take a 3rd photo and that ends the video.  The app then lets you add cool animated illustrations.  The app puts the photos and video together.  It turns it into a 12-13 sec video.  Here are a few videos so you can get the idea.

My cat Ziti!

Letting my friend know that her dogs were ok!

I had to figure how to use this great app with my class.  Check out what I came up with for my Mother's Day Tea!  I just strung all the Nutshell videos into an iMovie.  Soon I'll share my Mother's Day video that highlights this app.

 

This is an app from Prezi!  It is so fun and so easy.  What ideas do you have for Nutshell?

Have fun with this free app!

Random Thoughts About First Grade

Here are a fun first grade ideas:

An easy compettition is stacking Oreo cookies.
Katie won the challenge with 19 Oreos!

So fun to create funky glasses to spice up a cold January day. 

 I have an addiction to dice.  I love to give everyone 4 dice to add together.  Helps with practicing quick mental math.....I always say "Go To The Ten"  So that's what I call the game.

I had a great parent who would create wooden shapes throughout the year for us to paint.  We used acrylic paints and puff paint.  I love how they turned out.

These are cut sponges that my class loves to build with.  I bought cheap sponges at the dollar store and cut them into logs.  It is so simple yet my kids loved playing with them all year.

Have a wonderful day!

Bulletin Boards and Displays

Here are a few ideas for displays.

 Mother's Day Display.......portraits of our moms......During our Mother's Day Tea the moms all try to find their own picture.  I like how cheery and colorful it looks.

 This is a simple board but I love it.  I took a full length photo of each child.  I asked them to pose and show me some attitude.  My class was adorable.

 Another Mother's Day display, I had each child hold a different letter that together spells out "I love you mom."  

 International Dot Day display........I had all kiddos create their own dots on an iPad then printed out several copies of each dot and taped them on sentence strips to display on the wall.

 Ten Apples Up On Top Display.....I too a full length picture of each child in odd positions and they colored some apples to stack up on top.........I loved this Open House display and so did the kids and their parents.

 

 I always do some kind of pumpkin patch.......I love these pumpkin characters with their googly eyes and scary mouth and teeth.

 Rhyming Dust Bunnies are easy to create on iPads.......it's was easy to make them dance along the walls.

Each season I like to hang some kind of garland in half of the doorway.  The dollar store is a cheap place to get colorful garlands.  Here the students created snowmen and cut them out.  I strung them together.  I love the look of them and the kids are proud of their own handy work.

 This past winter seemed to last forever.  I love snowmen displays.  Pinterest has wonderful ideas.  We did a penguin unit and each child created their adorable little birds.

My favorite kind of display is one where the kids use creativity to express their own ideas.  What are your favorite kind of displays?

Osmo is Amazing!

Osmo is an iPad game system.  It's really cool technology.  It's a bit of Augmented Reality meets Learning that meshes with a whole lot of fun.   My class begged me to take it out throughout the year.  It is engaging, educational, motivating, easy and hard, and over all, tons of fun. There are four games or "activities" which are apps, Tangrams, Words and Newton. Their latest app called Masterpiece allows the user to draw incredible pictures. You buy the set up and game pieces, then download the apps for free.  Kids need very little instruction to play.  I love Osmo and was glad I took a chance and bought 4 sets early on.  Check out Osmo in action with my class.

Check out Osmo Here.  Great videos to see it in action.
Osmo for Schools
A Teacher's Guide for Osmo (new)

Very engaged students!

Look how happy these two are!

Love how this student got excited each time he created the design correctly.

Love the collaborative nature Osmo instills.

Osmo is an Amazing Product!  It might be just what you need to spice up the technology in your classroom.  Have Fun!

The Coolest Activity In My First Grade

My students showed amazing tenacity, grit and perseverance this past year with a very simple yet cool activity.  We called it a Thneed.  It is really a simple knitting machine made with an empty toilet paper roll, 4 popsicle sticks and some duct tape.  

      

     On the first day of school last year my class each made their own thnead.  I used a document camera to illustrate the simple technique of knitting on the machine.  I was lucky enough to have 2 other adults to help with the project on that first day.  After about an hour of building thneads and choosing colored yarn each child was learning how to knit on their own thnead.  We started off slowly.

     I allowed my kids to work on their thneads whenever they were finished their work, when I was reading a story, if we were watching a movie,  and when we went to assemblies.  This activity was amazing at keeping my class focused.  

 This is what they looked like on that first day!  A great start!

It looks like a spider's web if you are are knitting correctly.

Each child chose one ball to start with and worked until they ran out of yarn.  I would then just tie on another ball so they could continue.  The goal was to work until they knitted 10 balls (because 10 is an important number in first grade).  It was amazing to see some kids work hard just to get to the next ball.  

 The kids were so proud of their progress.

 Some kids were amazingly fast at making the long knitted strings.

 After a while the long strings were hard to manage so we used a rubber band to make it easier to manage.  

Then we moved on to an empty square tissue box to manage the long strings.

 At about the 4 week mark in school we shared our project with the school.

 One child made it to 16 balls at 4 weeks............it was a huge moral booster for my kiddos. 

 Here my class is in January measuring their long strings of knitted yarn.  We laid out the strings and counted the 12 inch squares.  Wonderful math project.

 Here we are counting the squares.

Here are some of the large balls of knitted yarn once the kids got to 10 balls.  We added a tag to each one and dated it.

 Here my class is the last week of school stretching out all of their work.

 This shows my class with all of their yarn stretched out.  They were so proud of their hard work all year.  In the photo you will notice an open area that separates the class from one student.  This child made it to 104 balls.  Which is over 400 feet of knitted yarn.

 The parents in my class were amazing at donating skains of yarn through out the year.  We used different colors that went with different times of the year, like orange in October, and red and green in December.  I spent many an evening rolling balls of yarn to keep this project moving along.  I can't wait to teach a new group of kids how to knit.

Please let me know if you want more details to this project.  There are lots of YouTube videos out there teaching you how to create a thnead.  I think it's called a French knitting machine.  

Happy Knitting!