PowerPoint is a Joke! a Halloween tech project

Halloween Howls- Holiday jokes from 4T from Michele Nokleby

For a fun seasonal project with powerpoint-  introduce kids to 818 section (jokes & riddles), bookmark some additional Halloween jokes, and let them make some slides.  Have them save to a shared folder, then merge the slides.  Upload the  class show to Slideshare or some other service to disseminate or embed on your website, if desired.

The kids love doing this, they get to practice all kinds of skills, keyboard commands, image resizing, file management and more.  The whole activity can be done in one class period.  The resulting show is fun to share with the whole learning community.

Bunny Stories

Oh my goodness, there are so many wonderful bunny stories to tell. Obviously, the rabbit books are popular with little ones at Easter, but how about reading Guess How Much I Love You for Mother's Day, or Muncha Muncha Muncha in late spring when the garden starts to sprout?  Finish up the story hour with a cute wiggle-ear toy paper rabbit.

All the Ants Wear Green Pants on St. Patrick's Day.

(Illustration from Stephen Sheen's delightful story: Miggie Gets Some Pants)

One of the more ridiculous and amusing activities I roll out every March is my kindergarten rhyming emergent reader about animals getting dressed for St. Patrick's Day.  I like to sing the rhymes to the tune of (Mary Had a Little Lamb)
I have a "big" flannel board version of the rhyme that I made.  The kids love dressing the animals as we sing.

All the ants wear green pants, wear green pants, wear green pantsAll the ants wear green pants for St. Patrick's Day

The ants wear green pants...
The pigs wear green wigs...
The cats wear green hats...

and... you get the idea.

The kids have trouble with the crows (bows) and the ewes (shoes), but they love learning new words.
Print the poem in a fold-able quarter-page sized book here:
odd pages  even pages


Other activities related to the holiday include
3rd/4th grade: writing "Green Poetry" in Word, then formatting and adding clip art.
2nd grade:  drawing leprechauns according to a glyph

March is the Month for Thinking Green

I decided that I really need to give my students more experience working with Microsoft Word.  I am more of a Google Doc girl, but I know their teachers will expect them to be able to create a simple document.
With this in mind, Ihad mys students in 3rd grade to think of things that made them think "green".  Then I read the poem "Grreen" from Hailstones & Halibut Bones.(Mary O'Neill, 1951)

They love these color poems.  I quickly showed them how to open a blank document so they could write their own "green poems".  I showed them how to use spell check, format the text, changing fonts, sizes, colors, use the centering tool, and finally how to insert, re size, and position clip art.  Finally, the kids were able to select a printer and generate a hard copy of their work.  ALL of this in 10 minutes or less, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that the students did quite well.  Part of the reason for success, is that the kids weren't allowed to do ANY formatting or clip art until their poem was done.  (quite a motivator)!

Green is ...

Like a long field at sunset

Like a pickle fresh from the jar

Like green beans and broccoli

And maybe a new car

Like grass around a tree

and some leaves

But just remember green green green

(Ashlyn)

The kids loved this "quick & dirty" project, and it gave them a much needed review of basic Word commands as well as a little keyboarding practice.  The kids also "remembered" how much they enjoy poetry books!

The Little Orange House- A story to cut & tell

Storytelling is a lot of fun, but when a child tells a story, there are important skills being developed, such as sequencing, oral expression, fluency, memory, and vocabulary. Additionally, sharing stories grows confidence and builds relationships. I try to offer many varied opportunities for students to tell stories in the library. I learned the story of the Little Orange House when I was young, and have retold it many times over the years, to the delight and surprise of the kids. They practice telling the story to each other, and then (with any luck) they will retell the story enough times outside of school to make the story their own. I made the template below so that my littlest students can get a little help from their grown-ups. Even kindergartners can tell this story if they get started cutting on the folded end of the paper! To download a template, click HERE. You will notice that the instructions are printed upside down, this is an effort to get folks to cut UP from the FOLD.

Putting Tired, Old Words To Rest

4th graders used the thesaurus to look up overused words, then they created custom gravestones online. The gravestones all indicate what words replaced the "dead" word. The kids really enjoyed this, and it would be a nice little mini-research activity for famous people of the past as well (Date of birth, death, significant achievements) Tombstone generators: http://www.tombstonebuilder.com/ http://www.futuregravestone.com/index.php (more ads here) I tried to put all the gravestones together into a slideshow, but almost every slideshow tool is now BLOCKED by our filtering software. This Animoto version will have to suffice!

Halloween slide show

I know it seems simple, but many skills were at work when the 2nd graders created this Halloween movie for you. Logging in, opening a program as directed, using toolbars, using the keyboard, and phonetic awareness (The invented spelling is part of the charm!) This is a fun project to share with parents.

Valentine's Day in the Library

Oh how the kids LOVE holidays! I had a steady parade of excited students delivering goodies today. I managed to consume at least a pound of Hershey Kisses alone. One of the most amusing aspects of the day was examining all the different ways the students spell my name.

I have a few great titles I enjoy using for Valentine's Day, but my favorite involves a serenading porcupine. Students really enjoy stories with songs incorporated into the plot, and it's so fun when they begin to sing along. I highly recommend Porcupining:A Prickly Love Story for the primary kids. Older students enjoy listening for the puns liberally sprinkled throughout the text. Identifying and understanding figurative language is a Common Core standard, is it not?

Martin Luther King Day

Sometimes I wonder if its a good idea to have a break from school on this important date. I worry that it will go unmarked by schools, much like Labor Day or Veterans Day. This year, I needn't have worried. Quotes from Dr. King lined the hallways, student art marked the occasion, and volunteers from the Jeanette Rankin Peace Center came to read to the children and lead discussions.

In the library, we read "The Sneetches" by Dr. Seuss. Even my youngest listeners can connect this story to the injustice and prejudice that they have learned about in the classrooms. I have asset of Sneetches made of soft yellow plush for the children to cuddle. One has a star, and one is without ( I had to give it a Star-ectomy after I bought it)

Older kids use the ReadWriteThink "Found Poetry" tool from the National Council for Teachers of English. With this tool, students take the words of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech, and create original poetry from them. The older kids can do a screen capture, then crop the poem for their blogs, assuming the testing schedule will allow us to use the lab!

There is an iPhone app version of this tool, but I don't know if I want to do the downloading. It's going to be a busy week, with my upcoming SPACE NIGHT CELEBRATION. Stay tuned!

Wants and Needs - a story and webtivity for the season

When it gets to be close to Thanksgiving, I have a favorite lesson I like to use with my 3rd or 4 th graders. I read One Grain of Rice, by Demi. This book explores many themes, from the mathematical concept of geometric growth, to hunger, crop dependence, and famine. The students are always astonished at how a single grain of rice, doubled each day, can become a monumental quantity.
It’s always a good idea to bring students a simple way they can make a difference in the world. The site FreeRice.com donates rice as the students play a game of vocabulary, simple math, or other subjects. The game adjusts in difficulty level depending on how many questions are answered correctly. It’s quite an addictive game!
The book, followed by introducing and playing the associated game, is a two-period plan. Many students will go home and play. They love to report how much rice they donated.