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.

Fall Session Week 3

Kindergarten Spanish:

This week we talked about the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead. Students learned that even though it has a scary name, it is not a scary holiday and it is not Halloween event though it takes place around the same time of year. Day of the Dead is a time when families remember and celebrate loved ones who have died. An ofrenda, or altar, is built in the house with pictures, candles, marigolds, special foods and items that pertained to the deceased. Although there are skeletons everywhere, they are not scary. Instead, the images are of skeletons enjoying the things they did when they are alive such as dancing, playing sports, playing music, etc. Children get calaveras, sugar skulls, that show that death is just a part of life and life is sweet. Special sweet bread is made in circular shapes to show the circle of life. In the classroom we made sugar skulls and talked about our own family traditions. Here are some pictures from Mrs. Waddell's class-hope all the calaveras made it home in one piece!

B1-2 Technology:

We combined a healthy food/food pyramid discussion with Halloween by listening to a Tumblebook story about The Lima Bean Monster. After that, we cut out and assembled out Pumpkin Math minibooks made from last week's powerpoint manipulation and spent any leftover time on Education City, our wonderfully engaging new skill review program which the kids seem to really enjoy!

3-4 Technology:

Our monsters are uploaded and we are excited to receive our partner descriptions and see their redraws. This week we watched a tumblebook called Frank Was A Monster Who Wanted To Dance and then made a skeleton dance on the cool interactive skeleton. We watched a short Brainpop movie to learn more about our skeletal system and then tried to Put Annie Back Together. Finally, the kids had fun uploading a class picture into the free photo editing site Picnik where they turned their fellow students into monsters with stickers and effects.

Pumpkin Math

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Pumpkin Math

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Fall Session Week 2

Kindergarten Spanish:

"Verano-Summer, Otono-Autumn,Invierno-Winter, Primavera-Spring. Each season has a song to sing." We've added a new song snippet from Lyric Language about the seasons onto our traditional class starters. Kindergarten had fun exploring the seasons this week. We learned and acted out weather expressions, dressed Senor Oso (Mr. Bear) for each season, and colored a leaf picture with the appropriate Spanish colors. Although Tennessee has four distinct seasons, we talked about the rainforests of South America which don't have the same seasons and the leaves of the trees don't change colors. The childred enjoyed hearing The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry. We ended our class by reviewing the word "calabaza-pumpkin," and playing a game of "hot calabaza!"

B1-2 Technology:

We have a new keyboarding game to start each class this session-Keyboard Climber.

This game is fun, but very challenging for many of the students. We talked about the importance of using the right hand for each letter and that the idea of practice is to do their personal best, not to beat the game the first try(or ever!) Following keyboarding, we jumped right into our pumpkin theme activities for the week. After a few minutes of carving virtual pumpkins and clicking/dragging pumpkin faces, we listened to our "guest speaker" tell us some pumpkin facts.

The video was done with Crazy Talk, a cool program we will explore later in the year. Armed with our pumpkin knowledge, we were now ready to tackle Pumpkin Math, a powerpoint inspired by Kevin Jarrett and others. Students click,drag, and type to manipulate a powerpoint which I will print out as a minibook to bring home later next week.

3-4 Technology:

The Monster Exchange is in full swing! This week students tested their monster descriptions with a class partner and typed them in Microsoft Word. Some students realized that their descriptions lacked important details or clear instructions and a lot of editing needed to be done!Everything should be posted to the website next week for our out-of-state partners to redraw. We should have our partners' pictures to redraw by Thanksgiving.

Fall Session Week 1

Kindergarten Spanish:
With our new Fall session, it was time to talk about otonoFall) along with the other seasons--verano(Summer),invierno(Winter), and primavera(Spring). We watched a Lyric Language song video about the seasons and then reviewed our colors in Spanish by talking about the colors we see in otono. Next, we were ready for our color bingo game! After the game, we learned another spanish word for something we see in otono--calabazas(pumpkins). We read a book about the most grande calabaza ever, and then colored a calabaza picture.

B1-2 Technology:
Since the B1-2 classroom theme this session is "Don't Worry-Be Healthy," we discussed how to be safe and healthy(no viruses!) when using the internet. We went to the great netsmartzkids.org site to learn all about the Webville Outlaws. We took care of those bad guys with the Webville Roundup game and listened to an internet safety song. We'll be coming back to some of the other games and activities at this wonderful site in the future. We finished up class offline coloring in our Webville Outlaw coloring book and taking the internet safety pledge. I hope your child has shared it with you!

3-4 Technology:
October is Monster Month! Halloween, the release of "Where the Wild Things Are," our school author visit next week of Marcia Thornton Jones and her wonderful collection of monster (and other)books--the perfect time to join in the collaborative web activity called Monster Exchange!Monster Exchange is designed to encourage the development of reading and writing skills while integrating Internet technology into the classroom curriculum. Classrooms from a variety of schools worldwide are paired together; the students in each classroom are split into groups, each of which designs an original picture of a monster. The students must then write a description of the monster. The partnered classes then exchange their descriptions via e-mail and the Internet. These students are then challenged to use reading comprehension skills to read the descriptions and translate them into a monster picture. The true challenge involves creating a redrawn picture as close to the original picture as possible without looking at the original and using only the written description of the monster.(From website) This week we made our monster pictures and tried to describe them--the students realized this is harder than they thought! For practice, we redrew some monsters based on other students' descriptions. Next week, we will type and upload everything to the website. We'll get out partners' drawings after Thanksgiving.