Pre Kindergarten makes a Chicken Life Cycle

Today in Pre Kindergarten we made our first UOI task with the iMacs. We used the software Comic Life and took some images from Sparklebox.co.uk

I thought that perhaps it would be difficult to get such young children (these kids are 3 and 4 years old) to create something by following a procedure on the computer. Again and again the ability of the 'Digital Native' never ceases to amaze me. These kids were easily able to drag and drop the images into Comic Life and re-size them and rotate them to make a life cycle. One student even changed the background colour and font inside the program without any help from the teachers.

Wow, at this rate we will begin publishing our own story books. Stay tuned ...
Here are two examples of the student work produced in the lesson today. As I explained in my previous post, the students have been learning about life cycles and have read many storybooks and even held live chickens that a parent brought to the classroom.

Pre Kindergarten

The Pre Kindergarten class have been using the iPod Touches on a regular basis now over the past few months. The class teachers now agree that it is time for the students to begin creating their own work on the class iMacs. Up until this point the children have mostly played mini games and created some simple 'digital art' by using Tux Paint.
To start things off we will use Comic Life so that the students can create chicken life cycles by dragging and dropping clipart images onto a page. By loading the clipart images into Comic Life itself, these 3 year old students will be able to use the program independently. This is linking in with the current class work about the life cycle of a chicken and follows a hands on activity in which the children got to observe and touch a real baby chicken.
This is the plan for tomorrow's lesson so I will update after it has happened.

iPod Touch in Pre Kindergarten

This was the first time that these 3&4 yr olds had ever tried using the set of school iPod Touches. The kids were very quick to learn how to switch it on and access the App. Within a few minutes I had all 12 iPods being used independently. The kids maintained concentration for a full 45 minutes. It was awesome!!! The App that we used was Puzzle Shape Builder Lite which is a free App.

iMacs in Pre-K

Here are some shots of the Pre-K kids doing reading. It's fun to read a book that is interactive and speaks to you. Look at these little kids in action!

BTW, we love to use Starfall.com
It's an amazing online learning to read resource that's for free. The kids love it!

John's Portfolio

My youngest child is in Pre-K this year at SWA.
Here is a virtual copy of his portfolio that he shared at the recent 3 Way Conference.