Bubble Day!

Where does time go? I can't believe how busy I've been with end of the year assessing and projects. I swear, some days I don't know if I'm coming or going until I'm already gone. I'm sure most of us feel this way at the end of the year so I know I'm not alone.  I think though that I'm finally feeling like I'm on top of things with just a couple of assessements to finish up and my report cards are close to being done (seeing as they are due on Tuesday at 8am- I know there's a light at the end of the tunnel for that "to-do" item)

As I mentioned in a previous post, we are counting down to the end of the school year with the alphabet. A few weeks ago we celebrated B day which was bubble day. We read several fiction books about bubbles including: The Bubble Factory by Tomie dePaola and Bubble Bubble by Mercer Mayer. We also read a nonfiction big book  by Dwight Kuhn and Melvin Berger called Bubbles, Bubbles Everywhere. We even went outside and blew bubbles.

The best part of the day though was writing time and the fantastic poems that my kiddos wrote. We discussed/reveiewed describing words, action words, and similes to complete the format for our poems. The similes on the fourth line are very clever and creative

Bubble Poems

The next day, we used the netbooks to publish our bubble poems in a different format. We started out the morning with a little mini lesson on the SMARTboard on how to maneuver around ABCya's Word Clouds site including how to change color, font and layout. Then we passed out the netbooks and learned how to log on (it's a different username and password than what we use in our computer lab, but the kids did fantastic!) I'll be glad next year when we all have our own usernames and passwords and it won't matter if we are in the lab or in our classroom on the netbooks!! We then used Google to search for the website, ABCya's Word Clouds rather than typing in the address.
We then typed our bubble poems into this site which gave our poems a whole new look and feel. Kiddos got to choose their own font, color scheme and layout for their poem. They all turned out absolutely wonderful and each and every one has its own unique look and feel. Check them out below!

Free digital slideshow customized with Smilebox

After we were all done, we displayed our original poems along with our colorful word cloud poems in the hallway for others to enjoy (see pic at top of post). The kids have really enjoyed seeing people stop by to read their pieces which has really given them a sense of pride and authorship (is that a word?... oh well...)


** We did run into one frustrating glitch that others have run into as well... when we printed our word clouds on the color printer the left and right margins of our images were cut off. The pdf's that I saved and put into the Smilebox below are fine but when even when printing from the pdf file the margins are cut off. I know this has happened to others as well... I plan to contact the webmaster to see if there are any suggestions as this is a fantastic and easy site for early primary kiddos to use.

A wee bit of Irish fun..

I love St. Patrick's Day~ maybe it's that little bit of Scotch-Irish in me that makes me love a wee bit of fun?! I also love the fact that 1st graders fall for the shenanigans hook,line, and sinker! Last week I read the story, The Luckiest Leprechaun: A Tail-Wagging Tale of Friendship. As we were reading the last page, a little note from Louie the Leprechaun fell to the floor. Louie mentioned that he had been looking for his gold in our classroom and, well, the rest is history. Each day, Louie has been doing something in our classroom: leaving a book, a message on the SMARTboard, a writing project, etc. Today in his frustration of not being able to find his gold, he asked the kids where they would hide their gold if they were leprechauns. He then left special paper and a project for them to display their answers on. He told us he'd be back tonight to see their ideas. In the meantime, Louie found out how to access our classroom blog and was a bit of a sheister when he took our 3D shape hunt pictures and put them into a Smilebox album for us, complete with little sayings on each slide. The kids were pumped about that as they could hear the Irish music playing in the hallway when they came in from recess. ( I have no idea how Louie managed that while we were gone to recess- wink, wink) Tonight I also noticed that he went on the blog and created a Voki- hmmm... a tech savvy leprechaun, what do you know!?!

Tomorrow he is leaving us a graph (Do you believe in leprechauns?) another note, and a money game to play during math game tub time. Sure glad that he's been a nice leprechaun, even if he has been sneaky. I hope he won't be upset when the kids bring their leprechaun traps to school tomorrow to try and catch him. The traps are an at home project that I encourage families to take part in each year. When the kiddos bring them in, they tell us about how they built their traps and how they work. I'll post some pics of their creations later this week.
Although we have a lot of fun with all of the tom-foolery, I've worked hard over the years to embed the silliness into our curriculum so that learning time isn't lost on fluff- hence the writing project complete with an Irish editor's checklist, a graph and money game for math, notes on the SMARTboard which we use as part of our shared reading and then respond back as part of our interactive writing, the many books he leaves for read alouds and guided reading, and the crazy note he leaves us in the computer lab which takes us to some fun St. Patrick's Day sites.  All of this is spread out a little at a time over the course of the week leading up to St. Patrick's Day. The excitement that is brewing in my class right now is exciting, a great way to spice up the winter doldrums!

25 sites in 50 minutes

For those who follow this blog or check in regularly, my colleague Tracy and I presented a workshop during our district inservice titled, "25 sites in 50 minutes". We talked about all of the sites listed below.

At the bottom of this post I have embedded a Lino wall for you to share great sites that you use or can't live without. Please add your "can't live without 'em" sites to our wall. Enjoy the following links- hopefully you will find something new that you can use as well! If you have any comments about the sites listed, please feel free to leave a comment!

Teacher Resources

Tumblebooks

Storyline Online

Smilebox
Shwup
Voki/ Monkey Business
proteacher.net
Teacher Tipster

Beth Newingham

Ms. Winston

Garrison

Harvey's Homepage

Sqworl 

WallWisher / Lino

Interactive, online kid sites

Wordle

ABCya word clouds

Abcya!
Arcademic Skill Builders

Young National Geographic

National Geographic Kids

Spelling City

Starfall

Giggle Poetry
Letter Generator
Mad Libs Junior
Digital Storytelling

Now it's your turn- what are some of the great sites that you use that you can't live without. Please add them to a sticky note for all of us to learn from each other. Just put your mouse on the blue "Share your favorite site" bar and pull down a sticky note of your choice.

To see others' posts, grab and slide the background up, down, left, or right. You can also hover over the blue tab on the bottom right which will slide out and show you where the various posts are located on the wall. Also, if leaving a link, in order for it to be clickable link, you will need to use the http:// address.

Smilebox

Looking for an EASY, fun, and creative way to share classroom pictures with your students' parents or for students to share their pictures from a project? Hallmark's Smilebox might be what you are looking for.

Smilebox offers tons of different templates to upload your pictures into, everything from slideshows which will hold as many as 400 pictures, to invitations and Newspaper Articles which only hold 2-4 photos.
Click on this link, Smilebox examples ,to see examples from my classroom blog.

Smilebox also offers a Teacher's Toolbox which will get you some additional features for free. Personally, the biggest advantage of being a member is that I can email and blog my creations full screen without ads. Creations can be emailed, posted to a school blog or website, burned to DVD or photo frame, or printed for bulletin boards,etc. Follow this link for more information on how to register for the Teacher's Toolbox. http://media.smilebox.com/teachers/welcome.