kids technology

There are still so many fantastic ways to learn and grow this summer!

Click the images to download a PDF.

This project was so much fun! Inspired by Brigitte Hollohan , we used the DoInk Green Screen app ($2.99) to take photos of each student in Mrs. Parisien's first grade in front of an image of Santa in the night sky. We used this image, but you could use any you like. It would be really fun to let students make their own using the Make a Scene: Christmas app ($2.99). Once the pictures were taken, we could have done any number of things with them! Print them for cute Christmas cards or gifts, add to Seesaw and type or tell their story, create a collage in PicCollage Kids ... really the possibilities are endless! We decided to have each student write a Dear Santa letter using this cute FREE template , then load all the photos into Book Creator app, and have students read their "Dear Santa" letters onto each page. It easily shared to Seesaw, and turned out absolutely adorable!

Loved helping with Hour of Code stations in Mrs. Bishop's 1st grade. Students were split into groups of 3-4 and participated in each of these activities. The combination of hands-on, "unplugged" activities, plus coding on devices, was amazing. The transfer of skills was apparent, and the students' perseverance and stamina for creating code and problem solving was phenomenal. Read more to see the activities the students participated in! 1. Osmo Coding 2. Daisy the Dinosaur FREE app 3. code.org 4. ThinkFun Rocket Turtles game 5. Hopscotch Coding from Teach Outside the Box Brooke Brown from Teach Outside the Box has some amazing resources for coding with little kids on her blog. Check it out here ! I also really loved Seesaw's webinar for K-2 students, How Do You Build An App. Check it out below:

Using the template below, students drag labels to the correct Thanksgiving foods. Students then use the drawing tool to draw their family in the photo, and add their favorite Thanksgiving foods. They can use the microphone or screencast option to tell about the foods. Click the image below to access a template with directions, and keep reading for examples from Mrs. Erickson's awesome first graders!

Teach Your Monster to Read is a wonderful, engaging program that motivates children to learn the basics of reading. It features a variety of levels for pre-K and kindergarten students, and would be helpful for beginning of year 1st graders and struggling readers as a "boost". Continue reading to see how to use this tool in your classroom. Create a teacher account for FREE online at Teach Your Monster to Read . You can add your students - it will create a star code and password for each student. You can also set which level you want each student to begin at. Click here to view the game levels. They will need this information to login to your class account. The online version is FREE, and students can access it from computers or Chromebooks. The iPad app is $4.99 , but Billings Public Schools teachers are super lucky, as the app went free for a short amount of time last spring and the amazing Deana Elder bought licenses for BPS teachers to use in their classrooms. So if you...

We converted this fun Mother's Day idea into a digital project using the FREE app PicCollage Kids . The first graders loved making these fun keepsakes for mom, then sharing onto their Seesaw journals. Keep reading to find out how we did it! Students worked together to take photos of one another blowing kisses to mom, then double tapped the photo and used the clip tool to crop their photo. Students then positioned their cropped photo into the corner, and chose a solid color background for their collage by tapping + and opening the background options. To add their hearts, students used the web search tool and searched "heart png". Adding the png allows them to search for images with transparent backgrounds that look nicer in their pictures.  I also gave the students options of using a fun trick I learned from Anita Goodwin . In the web search tool, they searched for scrapbook paper. Once they chose a few fun patterns, they added these to their collages and used the clip to...

Inspired by Mo Willems' Knuffle Bunny stories and illustrations, I worked with Mrs. Westrope's first graders to app smash DoInk Animation & Drawing app ($4.99) + Book Creator  ($4.99) and make our own Knuffle Bunny books! Keep reading to see how we did it! We began by brainstorming a list of local "hot spots", and each student chose one to feature on his or her page. (Initial choices were Walmart, Chuck E. Cheese, and McDonald's, LOL.) Once each student had a different location, they used the image search feature in Safari to find a good image of each location. They long tapped the image, chose "save image", and saved it to the camera roll of their iPad. We then used the app DoInk Animation to set this image as the background, then draw a Knuffle bunny over the top and make it hop across the page. These turned out super cute, and the kids loved experimenting with the bunny's movements. If you're unfamiliar with this app, you can find a tutor...

So, Mrs. Vergara at Bitterroot is an  Osmo Genius! In order to store her Osmo letters, she added magnets to the back. She labeled a cookie sheet, and the kids are able to easily keep track of the letters and find them when they need them. Wahoo! Thanks for the tip. Click the image below to download her template, which she adapted from this site .