Christmas Activities

I found a great site posted by Vermilion Parish Schools full of Christmas activities for the primary grades. There are lesson plans, resources, technology ideas, and interactive web pages. Enjoy!

http://www.vrml.k12.la.us/holidays/Christmas/christmas.htm">

Free Educational Games

This site offers free educational games for math, language arts
and geography for elementary students: http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/games/ Games can be played public or private. In the private version, no one can join the game without the designated password. In the public version, outside players can join the game, but interaction between players is not possible.

More Math Games

I found a site with free virtual manipulatives for grades K-3. These would be great whole class or small group activities using a projector or Smartboard. They would also be great center activities. Check it out: http://www.dreambox.com/

Onomatopoeias

As a way to teach my students onomatopoeias, I found a good book called "Bear Snores On" by Karma Wilson with lots of great sound words in it. After reading the book, I plan to have my students select an onomatopoeia, write a sentence using it and illustrate it in the Kid Pix program. After that, I will import the pictures into the Photo Story 3 program and record the children reading their sentences. I will then make it into a movie. I just discovered glogs and created one to show the steps of this lesson: http://kmurgas.edu.glogster.com/onomatopoeias

Mrs. Tenkely's Computer Class

I found a wonderful site today called Mrs. Tenkely's Computer Class that covers grades 1-5. There are activities for reading, writing, spelling, math, social studies and science. There are also resources for internet safety and typing. One of the links takes you to a create your own games:
http://tenkely.org/Home.html

Great Resources!

Here is a site that has thousands of lesson plans and educational resources: http://www.thinkfinity.org/home
There are interactive activities for grades K-12 in many different subject areas. Check it out!

Interactive Flashcards

I found an interesting site today that allows you to create your own flashcards or to practice skills using cards that someone else created. Check it out: http://quizlet.com/1288554/weather-flash-cards/

Summer Math Activities

Here are some great math web sites for kids containing math games. I sent these home in my weekly newsletter as ways for my students to have fun practicing their math skills over the summer:
http://www.apples4theteacher.com/math.html
http://www.primarygames.com/math.htm
http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/grade_g_1.html
http://www.aaamath.com/
http://www.prongo.com/math/
http://mathfactcafe.com/
http://resources.oswego.org/games/

Fun Math Games

I found a great site filled with fun math games for kids of all ages (adults, too)! They call themselves "an amusement park of math". There truly is something for everyone! Check it out: www.coolmath.com

Fraction Action

My students are learning all about fractions. Here is a great video featuring The Number Crew for introducing the unit! Not only is it entertaining, but it does a wonderful job explaining the concept. They have other math videos available as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohw_ro4q3vw&feature=related

Poetry

Here is a fun and creative way to write poetry with your students. Your students can select a shape from four different themes including nature, school, sports and celebrations. Then they brainstorm writing ideas. After they have completed this process, they begin to write their poems. When the poem is complete the children have an opportunity to edit them before printing.
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/student-interactives/shape-poems-30044.html

Happy Earth Day!

My class made Earth Day posters and then wrote paragraphs about their posters. I then had each child take a picture of their poster with the digital camera. I imported the pictures into Photo Story and then recorded the children reading their paragraphs.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

Here is great video for Earth Day from BrainPop Jr. Simply click here to see the video: tp://bit.ly/aI7ZCn

Math Facts

Have you heard of Audacity? It is a free download available from: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ I used this program to record podcasts of the weekly addition and subtraction facts for my second graders. After recording, I exported the files into MPEG files and put them on my web page. My students can go to my school web page and practice their math facts with me when they are at home studying for the weekly quiz. One parent even told me that her son downloaded these weekly podcasts onto his iPod!

Social Studies-interactive study guide

I created this Power Point presentation to help my second grade students prepare for their upcoming Social Studies test. They are shown the word and an image to illustrate the word. There is also a sound button that they can choose to click on to hear the word read to them. After taking the time to think about the word, the children click again to see, and hear if they choose, the definition of the word. (I converted my slide show to a Windows Media file so that I could post it here to share with you.)

Wordle Activity

My students recently completed a fun activity using Wordle. (http://www.wordle.net/) Each child had a partner and wrote a nice paragraph about their partner: what they were good at, what they liked to do, why they were a good friend, etc. Then each child typed the paragraph that they wrote about their partner using a program called Max Write. The paragraphs were saved and then later imported into Wordle. Below is an example of what we did:

Knitting

I am an avid knitter and my class this year has really taken an interest in learning how to knit. I have now taught 20 of my 26 second grade students how to knit. Here is a great web site that I sent home in my weekly newsletter that has wonderful video tutorials reviewing basic knitting skills: http://www.bevscountrycottage.com/teach-knit.html

Math Games

Here is a site full of math games for kids: http://classroom.jc-schools.net/basic/math.html
Lots of activities here!

Telling Time

This slide show is something my second grade class created upon the completion of our telling time unit. Enjoy!

Search Engines

I found a site that has a list of several kid-friendly search engines. This looks to be a useful tool! http://ivyjoy.com/rayne/kidssearch.html

Properties of Matter

We are learning all about the properties of matter in science. One of my students brought this link in to me to help kids learn all about solids, liquids and gasses. It has the lyrics to a song all about the properties of matter. You can click on the You Tube video at the bottom of the to listen to the song as well. http://www.gardenofpraise.com/matter.htm

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss

Tuesday is Dr. Seuss's birthday. Here is a fun site for you to check out with your students:
www.seussville.com

Show Me the Money!

Teaching money? Here is an interactive game for your students to play. Skill levels range from easy (under $1.00) to Super Brain (for big spenders). www.funbrain.com/cashreg/

Delicious!

Do you all know about www.delicious.com? It is an internet bookmarking site. You save your bookmarks on the internet, so you can access them from any computer. You can also see what other people bookmarked. Looking for a lesson idea on a specific topic? You can do a search and see what other users thought was useful to them.

Spelling

One of the women in my grad class told me about this site: www.spellingcity.com
It is a great way for your students to practice their spelling words. I tried it out on my own children, first and fourth grades, and they loved it!

Telling Time

My class is working on telling time to 15 minutes in math. Here are a few good telling time sites. The first one contains online math games: http://msjacoby.com/time.html The second one includes lesson plans, activities, and worksheets: http://www.fi.edu/time/Journey/JustInTime/contents.html

Technology Integration

Wow! What a great collection of technology resources! Check out this site: http://its.leesummit.k12.mo.us/studentsites.htm

Cool Pictures!

My class read "Cool Ali" in class this week. The girl in the story drew pictures on the sidewalk to take her mind off the heat. Then we looked at some amazing pictures that an artist name Julian Beever made on pavement. Check it out! http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/index.html

Let It Snow

The threat of the storm tonight has me thinking about snow. Here are some interesting sites I found related to snow. The first one allows you to virtually cut your own snowflakes. It is a cute idea, but it takes a little getting used to the scissors. http://snowflakes.barkleyus.com/
The other two sites have very cool pictures of snowflake, as well as information about them. http://www.itscaltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/
http://snowflakebentley.com/snowflakes.htm

Blogging It

I found an interesting new site called KidBlog: http://www.kidblog.org/ It is for teachers and their students. This site gives the teacher control over all of the activity on the blog. As a teacher, you can limit the visitors to the blog to only members of your class or guests that you allow to access the blog. I was thinking that this could be an interesting way to motivate kids to write.

We have been reading about online learning communities in my grad class. I did a search for online learning communities and found an interesting one that could be used in the classroom. The address is: http://www.myschoolhouse.com/ I especially liked the link I found there called "My Writing Circle". Students have a chance to add to an online story. After submitting it, it is checked for mistakes and to make sure it is appropriate. If so, it is then published on the website for the world to see. Students are not required to use their real names. I think this is a great way to motivate students to write and for students to learn from each other!

National Library of Virtual Manipulatives

Here is a great site that I found for practicing math. This site has activities for grades PreK-12. There is literally something for everyone here! I love that it accomodates a wide range of abilities. All of my students can explore the site and find something that meets their individual needs. Check it out! http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vlibrary.html

Similes

Here is my first activity posting. I did a lesson on similes with my students. Then I had them write at least one simile about themselves. These were created in Kid Pix and converted to a Quick Time movie. They were so excited to see the final product! I also posted it on my district web page so that the parents could enjoy it as well.

My Purpose

The purpose of this blog is to share ideas for using technology in the primary grade classroom. I think that teachers, myself included, would use technology more often if they had better ideas of what sort of activities to do. I am hoping to share activities that I have found and am hoping that readers will do the same.

Here goes!

Hi all! This is my first attempt at blogging. I am just learning about blogs, so here we go.