Fall Session Week 6 and 7

Since we started this session on a Tuesday, and had Tuesday computer lab glitches last week, this short week worked perfectly to get everyone onto the same schedule for after the Thanksgiving holiday.

Kindergarten Spanish:

Our Fort Craig Thanksgiving feast was timed perfectly for our discussions on familia and dia de gracias! We talked alot about what we say gracias for and about our familias and our holiday traditions. After coloring a holiday picture, we read Gracias, The Thanksgiving Turkey by Joy Cowley and played Donde esta el bebe, a fun guessing game.

B1-2 Technology:

First, just a quick note to say how proud I am of these little guys! They now come into the lab, go quietly to their computer, log in, and go straight to keyboard climber (navigating internet, favorites, ikeepbookmarks) all on their own! Way to go! This week, we watched a Brainpop thanksgiving movie and then used our knowledge of the first thanksgiving to make a picture with dialogue in kerpoof. The final results looked something like this:

Remember, to play kerpoof at home, login with student class id. The nickname is the first three letters of the first name and the first three letters of the last name, password is kerpoof, and class id is m861 Happy kerpoofing!

3-4 Technology:

After Type to Learn and our body keyboarding, students assembled their "Little Book of Thanks" that they made last week. They came out great! Once the books were put together, students watched a Thanksgiving slideshow and did some fun activities on ikeepbookmarks, including a kerpoof Thanksgiving picture.

Fall Session Week 5

Kindergarten Spanish:

We are still talking about familia-this week we added our abuelo (grandfather) and abuela (grandmother) to the group and had fun practicing the vocabulary with our "What's Missing" game. We read Abuela by Arthur Dorros, and talked about special things we like to do with our abuelos. Since familias help each other, we colored a "Trabajando juntos-working together" coloring sheet and watched Families in Mexico, a video about a 5yr. old girl and her family.

B1-2 Technology:

After Keyboard Climber, students used the program Kidspiration to sort food pictures into the proper spots on the food pyramid. This was a challenging activity for many, involving not just clicking and dragging but also resizing of pictures without accidentally moving the food pyramid boxes! The final product looked something like this:

Once the picture was saved in their folders (a challenge in itself!), the children did more food group sorting fun with The Bodies Game.

3-4 Technology:

We started getting ready for Thanksgiving by talking about some things we are thankful for, including some of the little things we take for granted. Students made a 6 slide powerpoint to be printed out as a "Little Book of Thanks" to take home for the holiday. We discussed the merits of clip art versus google images and learned how to copy and paste pictures from the internet into our powerpoints. This was a big project to finish in one class and they really did a great job!

Fall Session Week 4

Kindergarten Spanish:
We're talking all about our familias this week! We learned the spanish words for people in our immediate familia-padre, madre, hermano, hermana, bebe-and practiced them with our dice game, the pass the familia game, and Donde esta el bebe? game. Lots of games for lots of different practice opportunities to use our new vocabulary. Students also colored a familia sheet while they told me about who is in their familia. We finished up by reading Bebe Goes Shopping by Susan Middleton Elya.

B1-2 Technology:
After our Keyboard Climber practice, we measured our first graders and put the data into an excel graph so we can participate in the collaborative project "How Tall is a First Grader?". We know that to grow tall we need to eat healthy food from all the food groups and we watched the Tumblebook Little Pea to illustrate this. After a Curious George measuring game, students finished up with education city.

3-4 Technology:
With all our monster activities this month, it was time to talk again about internet safety and some "monsters" you can meet on the internet. Students used their "netsmartz" at various activities at netsmartzkids.org such as Meet the Wizzywigs and Whose Your Friend on the Internet. This is an important subject that will be revisited in various ways throughout the year.