Kindergarten Teacher

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Writing Animal Facts with ABCmouse Zoo Apps

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There are three different ABCmouse Zoo apps and they are all FREE. Each one covers five different animals. You can download set 1 here, set 2 here and set 3 here. We have been using this app to write animal the animal facts in a literacy center (pictured above). If you would like to use the same sheet I used you can download the PDF file here or the Microsoft Word file here. When the kids visit an animal in the app the screen below will appear  and all they need to do it touch the screen for the zookeeper to start sharing facts about the animal. What I really like about the app is the “show fact” feature, when they click on that the screen will change to show the words as they are read to them (second image below.) The last cool feature of the app is there is a quiz option that my class loves! All they have to do is click “quiz me” and the quiz starts (third image below.)

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Interactive Notebook: 16 Example Pages

My class finished their first interactive notebook so I thought I would share what those pages looked like. If you want to know more about the notebook itself please look HERE.

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The last two pages this student was sick so I will explain the page. This page they were asked to cut out the butterfly life cycle images and glue them in order on their side (left) and label them with the ordinal words and numbers using the examples on the right side.

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Expected job was to write as many verbs as they could think of. Some made a list and others made a word web.

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Creating Word Webs With Popplet

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I continue to find fun way to use Popplet. The past two weeks we have used the app for the kids to show they understand a concept we have learned in the classroom. For the example above they made a noun word web and we also used it to make a word web of insects (example at bottom of page.) To set up for this center I first search for the images they will need and save them on the iPad. Saving them is a simple as doing an image search in Safari and then holding your finger on top of an image for a few seconds until “save image” pops up. Those images are saved to your camera roll. Another option is to create a folder through syncing, you can find more info on that here. For the insects activity I even added some pictures that were not insects to the camera roll so they had to think before adding images. They really liked that challenge.

As part of the center for both of these activities I printed a “starter sheet” so the kids would be able to write the center part the Popplet correctly. You are welcome to use those if you like. To create them I took a screenshot of the iPad and inserted that image into Microsoft word.

Insects Starter Printable –  Noun Starter Printable

One thing you might notice is the noun example has invented spelling and the insect one is spelled correctly. For the noun center I only gave the kids the noun starter page, but for the insect center I also gave them a sheet with all the names of the insects. I switch back and forth from letting them sound out words and letting them find the correct words from a list because I see value in both.

After the kids are done creating the Popplet I save their finished product as a .jpeg and email that to my computer. Their favorite part is I print those finished images( black and white) onto a half sheet of paper and they get to take them home. Again, I use Microsoft word for printing the finished products by simply inserting the .jpeg.

Quick tutorial on using Popplet. Orange arrow is how to add text to a box. Red arrow is for adding images. The white dots around the box is how you add new boxes to create the web. Saving the finished project by pressing export (blue arrow)

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Animal Facts With Barefoot Atlas App

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The Barefoot World Atlas App ($4.99) is a great app to help kids to learn vocabulary while virtually exploring the globe. This week my class is using the app to learn fact about animals. As you can see from the image above the app has many icons placed all around the world and when the kids touch one of the icons they are given some facts about it (check out the video example below.) A great feature for young kids is the app will read the facts to the kids. My literacy center for this app is pretty simple. The kids find animals they like and then draw the picture and write the word. I have included that printable below if you would like to use it. Next week we will use the app again but I will let the kids write any of the icons/words they like.

Draw and Write Printable-> PDF here or Microsoft Word here

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Earth Day Video Using Explain Everything App


We made this video today for Earth Day. This was my teacher table activity and I worked with each kid individually to help them think of a sentence and write it. The audio was recorded during our quiet reading time. A great feature of the app is you can create each page and then go back and add audio as needed. If you need more info on using Explain Everything check out this post.

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Butterfly Life Cycle Video with Explain Everything App


I have always been a fan of the app Explain Everything but we tend to use StoryBuddy 2 and Educreations in my class because they are simpler to use for my Kindergarten kids. The only bad thing about Explain Everything is that it can do so much I think it is a little overwhelming. Now that my kids have had a lot of experience using apps to create stories I think they are ready for some more advanced options. The last few weeks of school I plan to let them decide which tool to use for the books we are creating and next year I plan to make that transition earlier in the year. So this week we made a video during large group to show the life cycle of a butterfly (video above.) I plan to make a few more examples with the class next week before letting them loose to create in the app themselves.

These are the main features I pointed out to my class as we made the video…

The black arrow is how you add text. Pink arrow is how to add the image (more about that below.) The Green arrow is for recording the audio. Orange arrow is for adding pages and the Blue arrow is how to switch between pages.

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When you click the add media button here are the options you get. My class will be using the first icon (existing photos/videos) but as you see there are several other options.

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The last step is saving the finished video to the camera roll. Again as you can see there are several other options including Dropbox, Drive, Evernote and even YouTube.

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Images for the story came directly from a google image search. Saving images from a search is very easy with the iPad, simply hold your finger on the image for a second and release and you should see the “save image” option. The image is saved to your photos (camera roll)

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