iPads for Young Children

After perusing the folders for this week, I found this article/video that I thought was very helpful in using the iPad in younger classrooms.

http://tvnz.co.nz/close-up/techno-toddlers-video-4972341

The video is from New Zealand but it deals with the same concerns that I had in an overuse of technology at a young age.

Black and White Week; End of Color Unit

Our finished color hunt board! Thanks to iPads...

Another big accomplishment this week (Halloween week, 3 days of school M, T, F, parent-teacher conferences). The students finished up the color board and I think it looks awesome! They love looking that the pictures and it a great look at just our room from a kid's eye view. I love the pictures and have posted some of them in the previous weeks but they are great. 

 I really only had one day to work on black and white. I started with the color white and talking about teeth. You'll notice our lovely set of marshmallow dentures to the left (cameo appearances from eggplant and cotton candy, purple and pink week). In light of Halloween, I briefly talked about dental health and brushing our little teeth and keeping candy off of the teeth. The students really loved making these fake mouths which was great because I literally tossed out a ghost activity 15 minutes before they got there.
     The next picture is a half finished spider, which was something I started and they took a picture of for our color hunt. The ones that the students did I had traced out circles that they painted with a brush after I had painted their fingers that they pressed on the paper for the legs. Once it was dry, I randomly hole punched around the spider and the students threaded white yarn through each hole. We put 8 eyes on our spider and counted all 8 legs. They wouldn't even let me hang them up they all shoved them in their bags to take home. (Sorry I do not have a finished picture of this, it was really cute).

Online Activities

Our online class title, New Literacies and Technologies has been a great way to explore new things to bring into the classroom, it is also a little frustrating here's why...

I teach pre-k. Don't get me wrong, I love technology but I spend time working on social skills, hand strength (writing, cutting activities) and teach my students how school work. The only thing I really think I could do with them that we have been exposed through in this class is digital storytelling.

This is my son at 2 1/2 with my new iPad. 

I have three iPads for my classroom and a personal one (4). My students can have their own iPad for instruction purposes. It's great but they aren't interacting with each other one they are on them (which is a big part of Pre-k). I'd like to find out how to better use these iPads. I have the capability of downloading free Apps or purchasing them. Any ideas would be great!

I have had the students use the camera App to take pictures on our color hunts. We made a huge wall of colored pictures. They take 15-20 pictures of something red, for example. Those pictures get printed then glued onto a red 11 x 18 construction paper. We go over all of the pictures then up on the wall it goes.

There are other Apps that are letter ID but I really only put them on the StarFall ABC's App. I want to do a digital storytelling for the unit we are working on now but to get them to record a voice over is what may be hard about that.

Any ideas?