iPad, youPad, weALLPad

You may have heard rumblings about a shiny new friend in our classroom last week, those rumbling might have sounded like this "AHHHHHH ASKJAJKDLKD iPAD!!!!!" Or maybe that was just the response in our classroom when I brought our new friend Paddington, or Learny, or Techie Ted, or PadPad (the jury is still out on the name I'm leaning toward Learny Paddington the Techie Pad-Pad but we'll see) the iPad in.
My reasoning for getting the iPad was that we have so many students who work at different paces, some finish REAAAALLY quickly and others need extra time, my go to response when one of the students asks what they should do next has always been "Read a book" but at this point in the year many of the kids have read and reread and rereread the same books during that down time and I realized that while they were doing something productive and using those reading skills, they weren't  really gaining any knew knowledge or being challenged. I tried find more practice activities for them to work on but I wasn't really happy with that as an option because it felt like I was punishing them for being quick workers so that went out the window very quickly.

Enter the iPad, I did some research on the best apps for classroom use and found that there are so many more than I would have ever thought. Now I watch for responsible students who are working hard and following directions and I put them on my list to use the iPad during seatwork time, when they have finished all their work. Usually the time is limited to about 10 minutes a person to try and share with as many of the students as possible, of course not everyone will get it everytime but I am making it my goal to make sure everyone gets some time with it each week. I have even used it in one of our reading groups when we did some super stellar reading and finished way early.

I know that some of you have your own iPads and tablets at home so I wanted to share with you a few of the apps we are using and invite you to let me know of any your student enjoys that I might want to check out.

1. Money Math












I like that this app has a variety of activities from practice adding coins, to making change, and using the least number of coins. This one appears to be only available in itunes.

2. Scholastic Storia
I like this app for our room because it takes ebooks to the next level with activities, questions, and games in the story. This helps with comprehension skills.

3. Phonics Genius
This app sorts words  by their vowel/special sounds and displays them as it reads them.








There is also a feature that allows students to record themselves reading the words to compare their reading to the readers on the app. I haven't yet figured out how to use that function yet.

4. Happi and The Pirates
This game uses spelling, math, and puzzles for a challenging game to find buried treasure.






5. Stack the states
Even though we are just learning about the states and we haven't gone into too much detail about them yet this app helps them learn to recognize the states and provides interesting trivia along the way.




We have a few more apps that we haven't been able to explore yet but the kids have been so eager to play the games even the challenging ones. I am really encouraged by their excitement.

Have a blessed weekend.

Butterfly Day!!

This past week we had 2 special days to enjoy. The first of those was a visit from the butterfly lady. Before that though I have some pictures of the kids acting out part of the Bible lesson for the week.

Kira as Joseph in the "beautiful" coat of many colors.
I had to improvise a bit and my Spiderman hoodie was the most colorful thing I had.

Emily, Benjamin, Jace, and Simon as Joseph's very angry jealous brothers.

Joseph was very frightened when his brothers went to throw him into the pit.

Three brothers plotting.

Stealing his coat and selling him to the traders.

Reuben returns to find that Joseph is gone.

We had a pretty great time retelling the Bible story in this way and the kids remembered it very well.

Finally, after waiting ALL DAY we got to go see the butterfly exhibits!

First up was learning about caterpillars and how they become butterflies.

Everyone was very excited when they got the chance to "pet" the caterpillars.

Then we each got to hold the cube of butterflies and look at them up close!

After that it was time to go upstairs to the butterfly tent where we each had a chance to go in and try to hold a butterfly on our finger!!!

Patiently waiting.

I even got to go in with our last group of girls and see them up close!

Some of our friends were not to keen on the idea of letting a butterfly sit on their finger but everyone was very kind and gentle in the tent being sure to not hurt any of God's wonderful creatures!

Butterflies make me smile because I think that we are so similar to them. We go through life trudging along like a little caterpillar, feeling so small and unimportant, then we meet Jesus and He shows us just how marvelous and wonderful we are simply because we belong to the King of Kings. Nothing is better than knowing that we are precious in His eyes.

We also had a special day on Thursday but I forgot to bring my camera home so I'll have to post about that one night this week. 

2 Corinthians 5:17 

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come."

Sunshine and Spelling words!

First things first, here's a little refresher from last week.

Lauryn's Garden of Eden made out of playdoh.

Here are some more of the finished Noah's Ark projects!!

This week has been beautiful weather but SO HOT!!! The kids worked so hard yesterday and we finished up with most of our curriculum early so I took them out to the courtyard to practice our spelling words with sidewalk chalk. Luckily there was a nice breeze out there.

After all the students had a turn to write a word we played a game where I called out a word and they hopped over to find it. It was fun but we got hot pretty quickly and had to go inside but not before meeting a special pet friend of Kira's.

Kira has a pet caterpillar!!! We are very excited to find out if her pet will pupate and become a beautiful butterfly.

That's all I've got for now, although we did have some more fun today so maybe I'll post again tonight. Who knows?

I would like to take a moment to let you all know how much I adore your children! They are great listeners and so sweet to me, they truly make me feel blessed to have them in class. I can't wait to see how much we can learn this year. 

"At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 18:1-3