Lois Ehlert and Colorforms

In Kindergarten we have been talking about shapes and how Lois Ehlert uses lots of shapes to create her stories in her books.  We used the app Colorforms to create shape animals.  The kids loved it!!!  We also talked about how Lois Ehlert is from Wisconsin.  We found out almost everyone has a Wisconsin connection.

Check out this cute video of kindergarteners and their creations!

3rd grade Cinquain

We started our cinquain project this late fall and are just finishing up.  The 3rd graders started used their google documents to create a cinquain poem where they learned about poetry, word processing skills like font, size,  alignment and placing graphics.  A fun project for 3rd grade.

Check out Mrs. Verkinderen's class book.
Mrs. Lemaster's class Mr. Mosher's class Mrs. Liekis' class

Caldecott Winners!!

In 2nd grade we start talking about what a Caldecott medal is and about the whole process illustrators go through to create books.  The Caldecott medal is given to the picture book with the best pictures for the previous publishing year.  This is fun to talk about with the kids and see if they can figure out what type of medium the artists have used for their illustrations.  We conducted our own mock vote so we can see if we came up with the same winner.   The difficulty is in choosing who might be nominated for the award.  There is no published nomination list so I look at different websites that list possibilities.
Stay tuned for our projects that will be finished the end of February!

The students voted and according to their top 3 this is what they chose.  I also had my 3rd graders vote since they had done this project last year.

1.  Beekle

2.  Draw !

3.  Sam and Dave Dig a Hole

The actual winner was:

Honor books included:

 

 

I guess you could say the kids know how to pick them.  Stay tuned for the student projects coming up later this month!

Kindergarten with Mercer Mayer

Kindergarten has been busy this year being in the computer lab but now we are trying out our ipads.  They did great as they learned about Mercer Mayer and some of his books.  We picked an app called just me and my mom to introduce kindergarten students to the world of books on the ipad.  This one was great because it was interactive.  I had them click on the option to read to myself then they could tap on each word to read to them and tap on other things in the pages to see words.  There was also the challenge of finding a frog character on every page.  Having fun while they learn.

All about 1st graders!!

Every year I like to have the students create something that gives me a little insight to some of their favorites. We used a program in the lab called kidspiration where I created a template and they filled in some of their favorite things. My favorite part of this project is where they create the small picture of themselves. Adorable! This project is a good one for developing the use of the paint tools, resizing graphics, changing font size and type, and dragging and dropping.

5th grade stick animation

We started a project with a free computer application called STYKZ -stick animation. I had the students come up with an animation and asked them to keep in mind a story that we would later translate through imovie.  We exported our video and created the storyboard in imovie.  It was a super fun project  and definitely made the kids  think about the process to create a story.
Here is one example:

1st grade Little clouds

In first grade we have been talking about the illustrations of Eric Carle.  We read his book "little cloud" and developed our own little clouds using tux paint. It was a great way to talk about illustrations and use of color and imagination. Mrs. Suby's Class book
Mrs. Enright's Class book
Mrs. Oehlerking's Class book