Spring Break Blues and a Giveaway!

We just finished our “Spring” break here (I use the term Spring lightly because there is still a good 3 feet of snow on my front lawn). It was relaxing and lovely BUT boy does that first week after the break SUCK.

That being said, we did accomplish a lot and I am linking up with Doodlebugs Five for Friday linky to share some highlights from this week.

We started working on a new digital story telling project this week using the fabulous and FREE app Toontastic!

I love how even my first graders are so tech savvy that I didn’t even have to teach them how to use it for the first time. I just told them what app we would be using and they went to town creating some of the cutest and funniest digital stories.

Once you open up the app you select “create cartoon”:

Then students can work their way through each section in the app…setup, conflict, challenge, climax and resolution.

They get to choose their characters and can even create their own backgrounds.

When they’re ready to start creating it records their animation and their voices. I love how it does a count down and then “Action”.

Once it starts recording they can move their characters around and do all kinds of animating with them.

When we were finished we hooked the ipads up to the projector and shared them with the class. The one in the photo below is actually from the app puppetpals which we were also using that day…I let my students pick which app they wanted to create with.

I attended an event for Mental Health Awareness that one of my student’s art work was being show cased at! It was pretty neat. 6 time Canadian Olympian Clara Hughes is doing a ride across Canada to raise awareness and one of her stops was in my city. Several local students were involved in creating a mural that will be on display at our local hospital. It was quite the event…face painting and all!! Below is the artwork from my student…can you see the faces behind the grass?

That’s my daughter and I goofing around at the fun photobooth they had set up.

And here is the larger mural with Clara Hughes speaking:

They started and completed construction on the school in Uganda that my students and some fellow TPT sellers fundraised for! It’s hard to believe what a little bit of time and effort can do. The students were previously learning under a tree!