Artist Heather Hansen, kinetic art, and time lapse video

I ran across this photo on my instagram

                                                                                                                  and the wheels started turning.

I LOVED this idea of having kiddos create kinetic drawings inspired by Heather Hansen.

First, what a great art integration lesson.  Focusing on a specific artist and style while at the same time working on gross and fine motor skills, and body movement.  As an Educational Technology Specialist I wanted to incorporate video recording since Heather Hansen's pieces are a result of a performance and wanted to capture the students' performances.

I started with presenting this slide presentation to a class of first graders.


We looked at samples of finished pieces and a few of her videos.  Then we talked about time lapse video, what it means, and how they access that feature on their ipad.
Once they had an idea of what they were going to do then they teamed up, one student would create their kinetic drawing while the other would be the videographer.  I simply grabbed white butcher paper, enough for each student, and crayons.  I would grab extra pieces of paper because sometimes students videos don't turn out, either they forget to set the camera on time lapse, or confuse the on/off button, so extra paper is essential.  Also it gets a bit loud with student laughter so be prepared.
After the students were done with their videos I logged into the google drive app and uploaded their video to my drive and then I compiled them into one video using imovie and then upload to youtube.
Here is our finished project

Quick Math Jr. app review

These past few years I've been extremely lucky to have been given the opportunity to attend some awesome math conferences and trainings. Like most people, I grew up with a bit of math anxiety and I wanted to make sure that my little kinders had the best foundation to hopefully eliminate that possibility. My own understanding of math has changed and more importantly what kiddos need to understand math has shifted. The most important thing when kids start to understand math is NUMBER SENSE. How numbers work together, why 5+5=10, that 6 can be broken down into 1 and 5, 2 and 4, 3 and 3, etc. to infinity. For the past few years in my kinder classes we have a calendar math routine that we do daily to build number sense. Here is what my math board looked like

I also have an electronic version of my calendar that I would do on the ipad in "notablility" that would be mirrored to the apple tv in my room. Even with a daily number sense routine students still need some independent practice, and that is where "Quick Math Jr." comes in. Let me tell you all the reasons why my kiddos and myself love this app.

First, you can have multiple profiles on one device so whether you have a small group of ipads, one ipad, or 1:1 ipads each student can track their own progress.

As kids "play" the game they win different body parts to create their monsters. The thing I love the most when kids are using this app is the excitement they have when winning shark teeth, or a funny hat. The simple motivation is one of the reasons why my students request this app all the time.

The different games are simple, intuitive, and gradually increase in complexity. This ten frame game starts out simply enough but will change to a double decker bus making it change to 2 ten frames, the people will be holding hands so that you have to move 2 or 3 at a time, and the numbers will change to equations.

I love this new feature that was added with the last update; you can see the kids progress on each standard!

This concept seems really simple but can be quite challenging for kids, especially when the start counting backwards, or counting by 2, 5, and 10s.

Subatizing is a skills that we work on daily and I love that this app includes this skill. Subatizing is when you can look a group of items and know the quantity without counting. You start this skills using familiar patterns (dice) and ten frames and then move to scattered patterns.

Balancing the boat with equal amounts. I really like how it starts to add groups of ten and then ones. I love this app and of course think everyone should use it. I hope that your kids and/or students enjoy it as much as I do. Teacher Emily

Uppercase Letters via QR codes

I am sure that you have seen these qr codes pop up everywhere in the last few years. A qr code is similar to a barcode but can hold much more information. My students LOVE using qr codes in a variety of ways. One way is in centers, students scan the code and then trace or write the letter.

If you are lucky enough to have 1:1 devices in your room or 1:2 devices you can play the game "qr hunt". I have the students post the qr codes all around the room, just be careful that they don't hide them too well, (we know this from experience). I'll say the letter, sound, sight word, or whatever I want them to find and they move around the room scanning qr codes until someone finds the one. It's a way to have a quick review that gets all the kids moving.

You can find the uppercase qr codes in my Teachers Pay Teachers store here for free! Happy scanning.

Who am I

Let me introduce myself, I'm Emily Haskell teacher and educational technology specialist. I'm originally from San Diego and have taught in Hawaii, Taiwan, Washington DC, San Diego, and currently in Northern California. I've formally taught pre-k, TK, Kindergarten, 4th grade and 7th grade, and have worked tutoring and intervention with grades pre-k-8th. I love teaching and am entering my 11th year in education. It's an exciting time to be a teacher, with the new complexity of common core, and the accessibility of technology students understanding and ability to demonstrate their knowledge is, well, awesome. I have an amazing husband who is the best attorney around. Join me here as I share lasting and new educational ideas.