Friday Fun

This week felt very long and the kids (and I) were exhausted by the end of it. Here are just some of the things we did...

Footsteps
A big part of our week was made up of dance lessons with Footsteps Dance Company culminating in a family picnic on Thursday night when all classes performed. It's a tradition at my school and has proven a fun way to start the year and build a sense of community.

Adjective Mobiles

This week our literacy lessons had a focus on noun phrases:
Understand that nouns represent people, places and things...and that noun groups/phrases can be expanded using articles and adjectives. ACELA1468.
We brainstormed a large list of adjectives and then students wrote these on coloured card. The cards were joined with strips of paper that students had folded zig-zag. these were then hung above students desks as a reference to colour their writing.

Overnight Take Home Book
The concept of noun phrases was introduced to students. We then used this to help us with writing the first two "Who Am I?" clues for our latest overnight take home book. Students were given the prompts:
I am... a cheerful lady.
I have... long, straight, blonde hair.
I like... Lego, riding my bike and sometimes running.
I am good at... doing things on the computer.
Under a flap they completed I am... and drew a picture of themselves.
As this book has flaps we bound it and sent it home rather than using a plastic sleeve folder.

Window by Jeannie Baker
We 'read' this book, looking closely at the details in the pictures and considering how the view through the window changed from one page to the next. We led students to think through the similarities and differences between this book and Uno's Garden by Graeme Base. Both books tell the story of the impact of humans on their environment, and illustrate a beautiful setting, turned bad and then a return to beauty.
Later in the afternoon we returned to the book and provided students with a photocopy of one of the pages from the text. They worked in cooperative pairs to label items from the picture with noun phrases eg. 'Woolly jumper' and then colored the page to be displayed.
This lesson reinforced the idea that images add to the meaning of the text (ACELA1469) and can be used to add detail to characterization, setting and storyline. It also provided an opportunity for students to discuss different texts on a similar topic, identifying similarities and differences between the texts (ACELY1665)

Letter Buddies
This term our writing focus is on letter writing. We began the year with a 'letter to the teacher' and this week started writing to peers. Back in high school, my bestie and I had a letter writing book, and despite the fact that we spent most of the day together and called each other at night, we still felt the need to write letters to each other! Flowing on from this experience, I thought that we could replicate this idea whereby students buddy up with a student from the other class and write letters to each other in a letter writing book. Students loved this idea and enthusiastically wrote to one another, sharing information about themselves and asking questions of the other.

Never Give Up Attitude

One of our values lessons this week was focused on having a never give up attitude. We read the story of Floppy Cat and discussed some of the things that we find challenging. We then set some goals and made some plans for how to achieve these goals. Prue, the teacher I am teaming with this year, designed a fishbone diagram worksheet for students to record their ideas. I am storing these goals in a wall display for students to revisit during the year. In this display the goals are accessible, but still private.

So all said, it was a great week but I'm glad to have the weekend now to recharge the batteries.

Tech Tips Tuesday

iPad for Preschoolers #2 Alphabet apps

I was a little nervous about putting my iPad into the sticky hands of a two year old, particularly one who seems to hack into things with natural ability! I bought a Fisher Price cover which has proven goop resistant so far and the hard plastic case seems to have done the trick in protection from everyday kid use. While not cheap, it has made me a lot more relaxed and so has been worth the investment. There are far too many things for mothers to stress over when living with a two year old!

I also adjusted the restrictions settings to prevent in app purchases and to request a password every time for new purchases. I have put all my apps (email etc) into folders for Mummy on the last page of apps. There is enough of interest to my little one that he doesn't bother with mine.

So today I thought I would share some of the Alphabet apps that are available and which I have found useful and worthwhile. It is worth noting here, however, that my little one has been more interested in numbers than the alphabet so far, so I am yet to see how his enthusiasm for these will develop.

Elmo Loves ABCs
This app is very large with great content for each letter of the alphabet and thus takes up quite a bit of space on the iPad. Activities are provided to support children with letter id, letter sounds and letter tracing. Children are rewarded with more content. My little guy loves the videos with the ABC songs that are included in this app. Parents can also track their child's progress.

Bugsy Pre-K
This app covers numbers, colours, shapes and the alphabet. The nice thing with this one is that it includes both the text and the audio for the questions, so my little one has some clues to help him answer the questions! He loves the Bugsy games and I am able to see his progress in this and other Peapod lab apps with an account. If you are interested further, you could check out the other ABC apps Peapod lab produces as they are similar to topic dictionaries and may enhance vocabulary and letter id.

Alien Buddies
This is another general preschool app that builds learning around colours, shapes, letters and numbers. The cute alien characters add to the appeal of this app, and the matching game is attractive to littlies. I got it for free when it came on sale recently, and my little guy was enjoying it today. There is an info page for parents, but no customizable features or progress reports.

AlphaTots
This app includes an interactive activity for each letter of the alphabet. My little guy enjoys this app, and has his favourite activities. It is a good introduction to the alphabet and sure beats the alphabet frieze or basic ABC book of yesteryear!

Goodnight ABC
This is one of my little guy's favourites. He frequently comes back to it and enjoys the music on the panda page in particular. It is VERY interactive and each page has loads of learning opportunities for children. To extend further, they can change to vocabulary mode and the label for each picture comes up so that they can hear and see the name of the item. My only gripe with this app is that, unlike Animalia, the pages include items beginning with different letters of the alphabet.

Animalia
This beautiful book is the work of Graeme Base, made interactive for iPad. Each page contains objects beginning with the relevant letter of the alphabet. Children search each page for the hidden items and can discuss the many other items starting with that letter/sound. My little one hasn't explored this yet, but I feel it will be more relevant to him as he gains a greater understanding of the alphabet - particularly for extending his vocabulary. I have only purchased the iPhone version so far and upsized it to fit the iPad, as I am waiting for the iPad HD version to come on sale.

rEd Writing
We only purchased this app in the last week, but so far it has been a big hit with my little one. We have the iPhone version, upsized on the iPad, but he has mainly played it on my phone. This is an Australian app, complete with accent and appropriate fonts for Australian schools. Children are rewarded stickers for tracing letters and numbers correctly. The monsters make it very cute! I was amazed by how interested my little guy was in this one given his usual disinterest in the alphabet.

Little Writer
This is another cute app for writing letters, numbers, shapes and words. I'm not sure of the font for this words, but if that's not a concern for you, than it's definitely worth looking into (and free at time of writing). I like the way that it shows the order of the pencil strokes and that it includes some words. I haven't looked into it much yet, but there are customizable options as well. My gripe: it is not very forgiving when you go off the pathway - which is good when you are trying to promote neat letter formation, but not great for very little ones just starting out.

Other posts that might interest you:
Tech Tips Tuesday - iPad for Preschoolers #1 Mathematics Concepts

Jolly Postman

One of the teachers I work with, Bec, put together a great unit of work around the book "The Jolly Postman" by Alan and Janet Ahlberg. Students made story maps of the journey that the Jolly Postman went on as he delivered his mail, and learnt how to write a letter and address an envelope.

Bec also made up a simple A5 letter template for students to use to write letters to one another. We made up red post boxes (as our postboxes are red in Australia) and encouraged students to start writing. I gave my students a folder to store their letters in so that they remember to reply to the people who write to them.

It has been amazing to see how involved students have become with this. One student even went home on the weekend and wrote letters to just about everyone in the class! I was surprised by this as it used to be hard to get him to sit still and write at all. As you can see, this project really has the kids motivated.

I have also been impressed by the quality of the letters. Students are trying to write small and neatly. They are also checking punctuation (with some reminders). Most of all, I love the content of these letters - they are using the social conventions for letters, and as time goes on, are making the letters unique to the person to whom they are writing.