Spring Session Week 3

B1-2 Technology:
Our study of habitats coincided perfectly with some Earth day activities this week. We talked about how humans can affect habitats and watched these great little video clips from Animals Save the Planet. This one was their favorite! 
The children created a creature in Eekoworld and did a great job making ecofriendly decisions about their home and environment.

3-4 Technology:

Our last week with Shidonni-can't say I am sad to see it end! The students really enjoyed it and many are playing at home, but the technical difficulties of using it in the lab made it very frustrating. This week we took our country research and turned one of our Shidonni worlds into that country with an appropriate landscape, flag, and place to visit. Our "pet" was a person from that country dressed in traditional clothes with a traditional name. We also drew some traditional food for our person to eat.

Spring Session Week 2

B1-2 Technology:
After our keyboarding practice, students reviewed habitats and animal classifications. Since we started the year focusing on mammals, this time we talked about birds and combined it with a fantastic activity borrowed from Ann Oro at St. Michael School that teaches skills for reading a web page. Students went to Enchanted Learning's Bird Picture Dictionary site and searched for birds matching the clues on their worksheet-a bird scavenger hunt! This reinforced scrolling through a web site, alphabetical order of dictionary words, reading for information (and not just guessing!), and patience. After they finished, students could explore some animal activities such as Funschool's Bird Watcher, Design a Panda Habitat, Paint and Make Habitats, and Bembo's Zoo.

3-4 Technology:
Our "Underwear Club" for Type to Learn is growing as more students hit level 10 and are restarted, this time with boxers on the keyboard to cover the letters! After keyboarding, we checked in on our Shidonni pets to see what other countries they traveled to and then picked one country to research using a variety of sites including google search, Trekearth photos, and the Cultural Profiles Project. Students copied and pasted pictures and information onto a Word document about their country's flag, landscape, traditional food and dress, popular names, and places to visit. We will be using all this information next week for our final Shidonni activity.

Computer Challenge #1

Click here on World of Wonders , take a long trip, and print your certificate! Return your certificate or parent note to me and get your name in the "I can" can!

Spring Session Week 1

B1-2 technology:
Habitats, habitats, got to have a habitat! Check out the habitat song. After Dance Mat typing, we talked about habitats, things plants and animals need to survive, and how different needs require different habitats. We tested this with the Build a Habitat activity-each time we changed animals, we had to adjust things in the habitat like precipitation, plants, and environment to make it happy. After that, we read about a pretend creature called the Manatami and had to draw a habitat where it could survive based on things we learned about what it ate and how it lived.

Any extra time was spent exploring the interesting world of Switchzoo where we could make our own imaginary creatures.

3-4 Technology:
For keyboarding practice this week, we logged in to our Kidblogs and blogged about Spring break. While many of us were traveling or just enjoying the time at home, our Shidonni animals were out traveling the world! We checked out their travel diary to see what countries they visited and then drew their trip on a map, including information like country, capital city, and continent. We used the search engine Wolfram Alpha to find out the travel time from Maryville, Tn to each country and added that information to our maps as well before we sent our pet out traveling for another 6 days.

Winter Session Week 10

Shidonni World Fun!

As we get ready to leave school for our 3 week Spring Break (before you get too jealous, remember that we started school the middle of July!), students had a great time using the web site Shidonni . 3-4 students got their own account (username tc311avatarname) and created a world by drawing a pet/imaginary creature, designing the world's background, drawing food, and playing with their pet. Our goal was to complete 3 missions in order to apply for a passport so our pet could travel the world over break and we can do some country research and project work next session. That's where B1-2 helped out! Since pets can only play games to complete 2 missions a day, B1-2 students got to play games on the 3-4 accounts to help earn them their 3rd mission. As a reward, B1-2 students earned their own world where they got to be the designers! Everyone loved this site, especially getting to watch their pets have babies and birthday parties.

Winter Session Week 9

B1-2 Technology:

We celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday this week by watching some of the beginner book video of The Cat in the Hat. We talked about how the children really should not have let that cat (or any other stranger) in while their Mother was out (and reviewed some internet safety tips as well!) and used Kidspiration to brainstorm some other things they could do on a  rainy day. After saving their work, the children had fun using Paint to create their own hat for the Cat and enjoyed playing some Seussville games. Here's an example of my hat:

3-4 Technology:

The older students focused more on Read Across America week with lots of book activity free choices. They could use GoAnimate to make a new animation about a book character or author, use Kerpoof to Tell A Story, Watch some Tumblebooks, or play some games based on their favorite books here or here.

Have you seen the Cat in the Hat rap? Check it out!

Winter Session Week 8

B1-2 Technology:

This week we continued our work with the Tooth Tally project by checking watching the Tumblebook You Think It's Easy Being The Tooth Fairy and then watching our published videos and voicethreads on our tally page. We had a lot of fun checking out the map to see some of the other schools who are participating from all over the world. It was exciting to "visit" schools in Thailand, Japan, Germany, and New Zealand but just as exciting to find our own Fort Craig on the map. We spent the remainder of the class playing some map skill games such as Adventure Island, State Puzzle game, and Treasure Hunt.

3-4 Technology:
Students continued work on their goanimate famous person autobiography by adding effects like music and props. Unfortunately, we can't embed them on the blog, but students can watch each others' and send comments. Have your student log in to the site and show you what they did!