Christmas Around the World

Kindergarten is learning about the different Christmas traditions around the world. Two classes specifically are learning about Greece, Mexico and Spain. I created a flipchart for the Promethean Board, we used Google Earth to show how far away the countries are and we even listened to their national anthems. The students have passports that got stamped each day we visited the country. They colors a map for each country and then did a craft for each each country's tradition. Greece started the stocking tradition. In Mexico, we learned about the legend of the Poinsettia and in Spain, we learned about the ringing of the bells at midnight.

Creating Maps of our Kitchen

Mrs. Payonk's students created maps of their kitchens. They started on paper making an arial view of their kitchens and then transferred it to Inspire software. They used the shapes tool and the pen to create their map. They then included a key at the bottom so we would know what we were looking at!

Fourth Grade, Art & Inferring

The week after Thanksgiving Break, our fourth graders took Art Class into the computer lab. After looking at pieces of art, they took to KidPix and created their own masterpieces. They used inspirations from the art they looked at to make their main picture and then inserted a picture (taken in Photo Booth) of themselves scared of the picture.

Kindergarten, Five Senses & Kidspiration

There is a pre-made template (love them!) in Kidspiration about the Five Senses. One of the Kindergarten teachers asked me to help her students use the images already built in to Kidspiration for the students to do a sorting activity. I will be honest, we were both hesitant to try this with Kindergarten, however, it worked out AMAZING! They did so great with it! We took their picture in PhotoBooth of them showing us their favorite sense and added it to their Kidspiration! Below is Addison's final product!

Students Tracking Their Own Data

Our 4th and 5th grade students are tracking their own data using Numbers! We had a lesson on what a spreadsheet is and how it can be used. We learned about cells, rows and columns. Students (for now) are tracking their Math Stars (a weekly challenge math set) and their reading minutes per week. Students learned about functions and set it to add up their minutes. Students will be adding other pieces of data to it as we move through the year, but they had fun getting started!

Google Earth, Communities, Neighborhoods, Necessary and Unnecessary

Mrs Farmer's Third Grade Class is learning about communities. They have learned about suburban, urban and rural areas and what defines them. Students used Google Earth to identify each of these areas in Salisbury, NC (our community). They had to show us their area and explain why. They then discussed necessary things and unnecessary things. They used Google Earth and the Places feature to find places that were necessary and unnecessary to the community. Students entered their places and explanations into a T-chart. It fostered a great conversation about needs and wants.

Life Cycles

Second Grade has been learning about life cycles. They have been learning about the general life cycles of some general things, but then each class has picked one animal (ladybug, frog, cricket, spider and butterfly) to really focus their learning on. Students are writing scripts and we will video them. We will blend together the videos into one video about each animal and then the classes will share their videos with each other to learn about the different life cycles. I will post once we are finished!