Tag: creativity

Gingerbread House

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Gingerbread House2357 views

What it is: Gingerbread House is a part of the Highlights for Kids website. This interactive site encourages students to create their own gingerbread house complete with icing, candy, food, as well as some less traditional items. The kids can’t get enough of this site that allows them to change the size, rotate, and flip the candy and other items to fit their wishes.

How to integrate Gingerbread House into the classroom: Gingerbread House is a lot of fun for kids to play with, they will ask to play and interact with this site year round. When creating a real gingerbread house is not practical in the classroom, this provides the perfect alternative. It is a great site to use in conjunction with Jan Brett’s Gingerbread Baby book. The site provides excellent practice for mouse manipulation and creativity. Set up as a holiday center or use the fun site for indoor recess fun.

Tips: The eyeballs in the “stuff” section follow your mouse wherever it goes. The blocks in the “stuff” section have arrows on them so that students can change the letter on the block.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Gingerbread House in your classroom.


SuperThinkers

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on SuperThinkers4102 views

What it is: SuperThinkers is a website that encourages students to become thinkers as opposed to memorizers. The goal of SuperThinkers is to teach children how to think by creating connections, look for meaning behind facts, and analyzing in order to understand. Even reluctant readers enjoy using this site to read for meaning. The Peetnik Mysteries are stories that the students read and interact with. In the mystery game, students use common tools such as maps, phones, and phone directories to follow up on hunches to solve the mystery.

How to integrate SuperThinkers into the classroom: SuperThinkers includes quality mysteries from author Peter Reynolds. Use SuperThinkers as part of a larger mystery unit or as a reading activity that encourages logic, problem solving, critical thinking, cooperative learning, analysis, pattern interpretation, mystery solving, writing, observation, sharing, discovery, imagination, self determination, reflection, and opportunities for self expression. The mysteries take about 30 min. to solve and would be best utilized in a computer lab 1 to 1 setting or as a whole class with a projector. The mysteries are popular with students, even the most reluctant readers enjoy working with the mysteries. The Peetnik Mysteries can also be used to teach students how to create a time line, compare and contrast skills, and as story starters.

Tips: Be sure to visit the Educators section of SuperThinkers for curriculum tie-ins, lesson plans, and posters.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using SuperThinkers in your classroom.

Cavantastic

Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment on Cavantastic2181 views

 

 

What it is: Canvastic is a great student focused graphics and text publishing tool for kindergarten through eighth grade. It has easy to use tools and options. You won’t find any of the “toy” features that you find in Kid Pix type applications. The control given to teachers is wonderful. Teachers can give students access to tools gradually so that as they learn more, they can use more. It actually grows with the user. It has the best spell checking feature for students I have seen. You can try Canvastic for free in your classroom for as long as you like but the print, export, and save features are disabled. For $39 you can purchase Canvastic.

How to integrate Canvastic into your classroom: Use Canvastic as part of your publishing center. Students can publish written stories complete with illustrations. Students can create their own graphic organizers on any subject using the Canvastic software.

Tips: Join the Canvastic community to contribute ideas for improvement of the software, how you are using it in your classroom, and to foster an atmosphere of communication and exchange. In the Community you will find example lesson plans that are tied to state and national standards.