Teaching With Style: interactive books

Showing posts with label interactive books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label interactive books. Show all posts
Here are some things that have been going on in my classroom the past couple of weeks!

Interactive Math Notebooks from my friend Yvonne Crawford!

Here is the activity on fact families.  It's a great introduction for each standard.


Doubles Dude - from Amy Lemon's Addition Strategy pack!

How To Make a Snowman writing from Sweet Sensations.

And my class has been LOVING our Fun Friday board.  I saw this idea on my friend A Teeny Tiny Teacher's blog.  It's such a smart system.  And it works for inside recess, too! It was raining once last week and the vice principal came to my room to watch the kids so I could go check my mailbox and run to the copy room real quick.  When I got back, the kids were telling her all about the Fun Friday board and she was so impressed! The kids get out all the supplies, move through the activities independently, and clean up - all on their own.  Fun Friday is my favorite 30 minutes of the week! Thank you Teeny!

Games on Laptops.  I set up a free Portaportal page that has lists of links all organized by subject.  They get to play whatever game they want from the page on Fun Friday.

Cars and Legos.  Favorites for the boys. I got the Legos at Amazon.  They were cheaper than Walmart and Toys R Us!  The cars are a collection of Tonka tractors and wooden cars from when my son was little.

These girls picked Math Manipulatives and are building with Magnatiles.

These girls picked art.  They are painting with watercolors.

It's been busy around here! But we still manage to squeeze in some fun.  What has your class been up to during the past couple of weeks?



Last week my class learned all about the pumpkin life cycle from my Pumpkin Life Cycle and Experiments pack!

We started off by reading the mini book and filling in the blank spaces with the correct life cycle terms.

We then reviewed the vocabulary using posters and vocab cards, then added some activities to our interactive science notebooks.  We also filled out a life cycle sheet as a check-in assessment.

Then, I brought a pumpkin to school and we got started on the experiments.  There are 4 experiments that follow the scientific method.  As practice, we walked through the steps of the method and did Stephanie's egg experiment from her Life Cycles pack as practice.

First we found out if a pumpkin could sink or float.  Boy, were those kids surprised when it bobbed in the sink!

Then, we read the book How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?, then we predicted how many seeds we thought were inside our pumpkin.  

Here are my kids counting out the seeds on laminated 10's frame mats.  I divided the seeds into 5 bowls, then gave 1 bowl to each table and had them work together to fill up their mat.  At the end, each group reported out how many seeds they counted and we added them all up (by 1's, 10's, and 100's!) to find the total amount.  We had 674!  Only one kid got a close prediction, he thought 602.  Most kids chose either 100 or 1000! :)






After we counted them, I collected all the seeds and filled the bowls with water.  I walked around to each table and dropped a spoonful of seeds into each bowl so the kids could see if they sank or floated.  Only one boy predicted that they would sink.  I think he wanted to go against the majority :)

Our last experiment we will do on Monday, because I had to take the seeds all home.  Our school permits teachers and parents to bring in food cooked at home, so I roasted all the seeds in my kitchen, then flavored them 3 different ways: salty, savory, and sweet.  

Lucky for you, I made a freebie for this last experiment, as well as a How-to writing prompt: Pumpkin Seed Experiment, Recipe, and Writing Freebie!


 Three different writing pages:



I love teaching about pumpkins around Halloween time!  The kids love it, too!  I have a Jehovah's Witness student this year, and since I don't want him to feel left out, I am not doing any traditional Halloween activities.  This unit is a perfect alternative to Halloween, or even a perfect supplement!

What other things do you do with pumpkins?

I'm Linking Up

Freebie Fridays

I got an iPad from Donorschoose this summer and love using it to project images, problem of the day for morning work, and even videos through my projector.  I also love using it for reading centers.  I organize my apps by subject and tel the kids they can use any app they want.  I hide the camera and Safari and tell them not to use them - luckily my kids are super honest!  Because my kids use it everyday, I am always on the lookout for quality educational apps.  One that never fails me is the Elfishki series of interactive stories.

Elka Palka Productions was generous enough to let me review Elfishki and the Performance in the Fountain.  It's a really cute story about mermaids.  My students love it, because they can choose to read it themselves or have a soothing voice read it to them.  It also includes a fun I-Spy type game and the illustrations within the book move and make noise when touched.  It is also read in Russian, though I don't have any Russian speakers on Lana'i.  It's still fun for them to hear another language being spoken.  My favorite part, however, are the comprehension questions.  There are 3 questions per page.  I like to have students read this story with a buddy (I have a head phone splitter so two students can use it), then they practice answering the questions together.  


Here are my kiddos reading it together.  We are on fall break and took a mini vacay to Maui to pick up Grandma and Grandpa from the airport. 
One of the pages of illustrations.    
 

The best part is that this app is only $2.99 in the iTunes App Store!

The good people from Elfishki were also generous enough to offer a free copy of their other new story, Elfishki and the Unwelcome Guest for one of my lovely readers!  This story is read in English, Russian, and Spanish!


Check out their website for more Fairy tales, myths, and legends of Elfishki! 

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I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.