4th grade projects with beanie babies

I love to make learning fun but sometimes it is just plain hard to teach a let's face it a not so interesting topic like the dewey decimal system.  So I decided to use beanie babies.  I had several just sitting around my house from my own children and I had some donated.  I decided hey these might be really useful to teach kids about non-fiction.  So we took a picture of the beanie by themselves, one of them with the student and one reading a book about themselves.  The students did some research about their animal using the destiny app to find their book about their animal and had to come up with 3 interesting facts .  They put the pictures in an imovie presentation recorded their 3 facts and then used an app called Chatterkid to create a talking animal describing where they would find them on the shelf.  It was a great activity to get kids to find the book and get a better understanding of non-fiction.
Scroll down to the bottom to see our finished projects!
Apps we used for this project

Here is some of our finished products!

Kindergarten & pete the cat

We have been studying one of my newest favorite book characters "Pete the Cat".  Pete is a big hit among the young students and he even has some groovy tunes to go along with his books. Take a listen
Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons" Song

 

Here are some of my kindergartners creating their own groovy glasses on pictures of themselves using draw free

I love to read 2015

This year we decided to move "i love to read month " to march.  I always try to decorate the media center with a fun theme for the month.  This year it was Dr. Seuss loves to Read.  I filled some bags up with stickers, bools, erasers, pencils, bookmarks etc.  The students had the opportunity to answer trivia questions each week and then put their name in for a weekly drawing to get a goody bag.  The kids loved it and it was a great way to celebrate the month and fun as well.  Some of my past themes have included pirates, carnival, Theatre/Award theme, western, Chinese New Year etc.  Dr.  Seuss is one of my favorites and the kids too I'm sure.