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.)

I try to find ways to use Perler beads as often as I can. They are colorful, fun and really great for fine motor practice. This week I decided to pair them with some q-tip art sheets I had seen before (download them here) This activity is not as creative as I prefer their art jobs to be but overall I think it worked really well. The kids work on fine motor by practicing to put a perfect sized dot of glue in each circle, when they pick up and place the bead and of course cleaning up all the beads after the center is over.

Here are three other posts I have about Perler beads…

Patterns with Perler beads

More fun with Perler beads

Fine motor with Perler beads

I sent a Mother’s Day video card to all the parents today using the Explain Everything app (example below) The first thing I did was to take a picture of the card they made using their hand print (I will post that printable here soon so you can use it if you want) Next we took two videos per child. One video they said something nice and then I love you and the second clip they said “Happy Mother’s Day.” I have found that breaking up what they say into segments is actually faster to get done because we have fewer retakes but you could of course record it all in one clip. Then I imported the picture into Explain Everything along with the first video and recorded that video playing. After that I imported their second video and just placed it in top of the first one and recorded that video playing. The last step was saving it to the camera roll. If you need some more details on using the app try this post. Happy Mother’s Day to all!

Haiku Deck is a great FREE app that I have had my eye on for a while but never used much in my Kindergarten class. That changed a few weeks ago when @iPadSammy mentioned the new graph feature. If you are not familiar with Haiku Deck it is an app similar to Power Point that lets you create slick and simple slide shows. The best feature is the ability to search 1000′s of creative commons pictures within the app that can be easily added to the presentation. I certainly suggest checking out all the app can do but for this post I am going to focus on the graph feature.

When you first open the app you will be given a brief tutorial and then land on a screen similar to the one below. Click the plus sign to get started with your first deck.

Here is how I used the app in my class to graph our favorite ice cream flavors. First, we made a list on the white board of different kinds of ice cream and from that list I picked five for our graph. As you can see in the image below I used the “Tt” (blue arrow) option so the first slide would have a format with a title and numbered choices. To edit the text on the slide all you have to do is touch the area you want to edit or type on. Once we had this slide complete I had my class vote for their favorite flavor and I collected that data on the whiteboard. Using that data we moved to the next step of showing the data in a graph and added a new slide to our deck using the plus sign (yellow arrow.)

For the next slide I picked the image option (red arrow below). Next select the graph option (orange arrow) and then pick the type of graph you want to use. We used the bar graph this week (green arrow) and will work with the pie graph next week. Last click the “Done” button to create the slide. Also want to point out that you can switch between the slide you are editing at the bottom of the screen (blue arrow)

After you finish the step above you will see a screen similar to the one below. Editing the data is super simple with Haiku Deck which is why I love this app. To add more columns to the graph click the plus sign (red arrow) and to delete a column press the red “x” (green arrow.) Editing the label for each column simply by clicking the word under each column (yellow arrow.) Changing the number or total for each column by dragging the dot at the top of each column (blue arrow.) I know it seems like a lot of steps but if you practice it once it is very simple to repeat. The last tip is to edit the units for the graph (orange arrow.) This will allow you to change the Y-axis units to better match the data in your graph.

Sharing the deck is also very easy by going back to the main menu (top left of the app) and then pressing the share button for your deck. When you choose share you will be given the options below. Click here to see the finished Haiku deck from this post.

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.

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