Math and I-pads!

What a fantastic couple of weeks we have had in Pre-K!   This week, our curriculum is focusing on the letters:  Tt, Gg, Ee and Rr.   We have added new QR codes to our bucket that include songs that review these letters.  We also added the Five Little Pumpkins poem and the Life Cycle of the Pumpkin. The QR codes give the children instant and safe access to online material.   When making our QR codes, we use Safeshare.TV.   This site gives me a link to a safe site for children to view the videos. 

The children have also been exploring our sensory area.  Our sensory bins are full of corn, leaves and tiny, plastic pumpkins.   We love to dig for our treasures!  Our rice bin is full of tiny, plastic spiders and skeletons!   Our sand table still contains foam letters and seashells.   The children cannot get enough of the soft, white sand from the Gulf of Mexico.    (I can't either!) 

This week the children became very familiar with one of my favorite apps Doodle Buddy.   This app is free and can be used in so many different ways.    This week we used it to practice writing letters and counting.   The children had such a fun time choosing colors and items to count.  

This is my 6th year of teaching and everyday I get more and more excited about the opportunity to be 1:1 I-pad in our classroom.   This is the first time in my teaching career where I have seen 100% of my students be actively engaged in lessons on a consistent basis.   This is how we must teach the next generation.  

The video below is of the children writing numbers using the app Doodle Buddy.   Can you see and hear the excitement?    
The pictures are of the students using Doodle Buddy to count objects (one to one correspondence).  What I also love about the I-pad is that the students can take a screen shot of their work and save it to their camera roll.  We have instant assessment!!    ENJOY!

More Digital Storytelling!

Our I-pads are becoming an integral part of our classroom. My goal is to not just pull out the I-pads for "tech time", but to fully use them as a learning tool throughout the school day.   We are making great strides in that direction!  All of the I-pads have been loaded with specific apps that meet the individual need of each student.   The variety of apps on the market is astounding.   I can find an app to focus on just about any Pre-K standard.  (In a future blog post, I will share with you some of my favorites!)  The apps (and I-pads)  will never replace good instruction from the classroom teacher, but they can be a powerful tool to enhance learning or extend a skill.     Having a class that is 1:1 Ipad has allowed me to differentiate instruction in a way like never before.  While one group may need to focus on a math skill such as patterning, another group may need remediation on a specific literacy skill such as rhyming.   This is our first year to be 1:1, so we are learning as we go...and we still have a long way to go.   I am always in a constant state of planning, teaching, and reflecting. 

This past week the fire truck visited our school!   Prior to its arrival, we read books and talked about fire trucks.  We made a chart with all kinds of words that we think of when we see a firetruck.   When the fire truck came on Wednesday, the students used their I-pads to take pictures.   Afterwards, the students created a digital story about their experience using MyStory App.  The students imported pictures from the camera roll and used them in their digital story.   They had so much to share!   The children really love the audio feature on the app.   It's great for them to listen to themselves telling the story.   Sometimes, they will want to go back and correct something they don't like.   This app is not only making them good writers and storytellers, but also good listeners! 
 

Please click on the following links and you can see a sample of the stories from the week.   Don't forget to listen to the audio.  You will need to click the play button.    Enjoy! 

Fire truck story #1 

Fire truck story #2 

Fire truck story #3 

Fire truck #4 

Five Little Pumpkins Re-Tell  (this story is having a hard time loading..please click the arrow on the right side of screen and it should work)