Thursday, May 23, 2013

What's Up in Grade One?

We are on the down hill slide..... once Spring Break hits, don't blink because you might just miss the rest of the school year!  I can not believe we have approximately 20 school days left! 

We have been faithfully using the ipads in our classroom on a daily basis, I have just not been so faithful when it comes to blogging about it!  So what have we been up to you ask? 

We we made a lovely Mother's Day video using DoodleCast Pro.  We played the video during our Mother's Day tea.  The video got a few laughs and had a few mom's nervous about what their kiddo might say!  We did encounter a few troubles creating the video.  We could not edit the voice recording without deleting what everyone had said - this becomes tricky when you are interviewing 20 first graders.  We also attempted to go back and add a picture on the first screen - on my ipad the picture showed up no problem.  As soon as I converted it to a Youtube file - the voice (our singing) was there but no picture!  Weird! Oh well, everyone loved the video!

We have discovered a few new apps as well.  

Learning Money With Leo:  This app is free at the itunes store

iPad Screenshot 3
I LOVE this activity.  I also LOVE that it is Canadian Money.  Thanks Royal Bank!

Patterns by EdNinja:  This app is currently FREE but has a regular price of 3.99 I believe.
iPad Screenshot 1
This app allows you to set up player profiles and track progress.  I love how the missing element is not always at the end of the pattern.

Math Kingdom:  My kiddos LOVE this one, they actually cheer for it! You practice addition or subtraction as a little "rodent" battling creatures in your kingdom!  There are 3 difficulty levels and the app encourages you to go as fast as you can!  Excellent mental math for mastering those facts!  It's 2.99, again I got it free in April, but I think this one is worth the money!  There is a Bugsy Kindergarten math app that looks very interesting to me as well.  I'll be on the look out for when it goes free!
iPhone Screenshot 3

Brain Nook Math:   I was fortunate enough to get this app free as well.  The regular price is 4.99.  It covers  many areas of the math curriculum and is excellent classroom practice.  
iPad Screenshot 1

Those are our new exciting apps, of course we continue to use some of the old favorites!

So what's in store for the next 20 days?

I have an interesting writing project in mind using the ipad camera, as well as a social studies story telling project.  Keep checking back, I promise to post about both - only 20 days to squeeze it all in!