Five for Friday {with a free app suggestion}

Oh what a week! I've been down, I've been up, I've been around the block and back! It's Friday though and I am ecstatic to be at home for two days. (Plus I got good news today... I will be teaching Grade 1 again next year... but it's not quite official yet, so I'm keeping it to myself for now!!) I am linking up with Doodle Bugs again for her fabulous linky to share some randoms from the week.

1. I saw this pin here for a Mother's Day card and I just loved the flower sticking out of it! I brought some of my girly scrapbook paper to school to create these cute cards. The kids wrote sweet messages and drew pictures for their mom on the inside. I took a picture of each student pretending to hold flowers, then we glue the picture to the front with a fake flower. So easy and cute! :)

2. Another pinterest-inspired Mother's Day craft was our gift (pinned from here). I picked up a variety of pot holders from the dollar store and some fabric paint. We painted the kids hands in the middle and attached a recipe for mother's love (freebie from Susan at TGIF). They turned out adorable!

3. I finally decided to let my kiddos to let my kiddos take home their grassheads. (Really I was just tired of having to water them every day... lol) So at the end of the day we opened our hair salon and cut our grass heads' hair! They loved it!

4. We are working on measurement in math right now. This fun activity was from Primary Junction's Second Grade Common Core Measurement Unit. We traced our hand and foot and measured them with unifix cubes. Very hands-on!

5. Here's a new free app for you to try... for iPads or iPhones/iPod Touches. It's called A+ Spelling Tests. You can input your own spelling/sight word lists and there is a record button so you can record your voice saying each word. It's super easy to use! There is a scramble game where students hear the word and have to unscramble the letters or there is a spelling test where students hear the word then they have to spell it. Try it out if you haven't heard of it before!

Enjoy your weekend! :)

More Free iPad Apps!!

I just found a new app that I wanted to share! It's called "Record of Reading" and it's free! It is for taking running records. I have been looking for an app for this and was so excited to find it! Click the link to find the app on iTunes.

It has a blank running record page that you can use when listening to your students read. You can save the files or email them. The neat things is you can also record the student as they are reading and it saves the audio file with the running record. Awesome for checking back or showing to parents at conference time.

You can use your finger fairly easily, but I bought a stylus to use. They are relatively cheap and make writing pretty easy on the iPad.

Here are 10 other free apps that are worth checking out. Just click the buttons to see them in iTunes!

1. This is a collection of interactive story apps from the Collins Big Cat collection. There are 8 free stories to download! 

 2. SpellingCity -- the app version of the website!

3. BrainPOP Jr. Movie of the Week

4. ABC Letter Tracing -- Have students who are still having trouble forming their letters correctly? This is great practice for them!

5.  Cimo Spelling Sight (Lite) -- Adorable penguin game where students have to spell high frequency and Dolch sight words. Choose a level from K-3.

6. Geoboard -- No more snapping elastics flying across the room! Create 2D shapes and geometric pictures with this app.

7. ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard -- A personal interactive whiteboard. Record your voice and your presentation on the whiteboard.

8. Gingerbread Dress Up -- A cute Christmas app for decorating a gingerbread cookie.

9. Christmas Tale -- A Christmas interactive story.

10. Lastly, this is more a personal app favourite, but it does have some kid-friendly playlists! Songza is an amazing music player app. It has playlists of music for every mood/genre/artist/decade you can think of! The music is free to listen to... the only thing is you get a limited number of "skips" per hour, but that's more than you get with the radio! I listen to it all the time.

Hope you found this post useful! Go technology! :)

Apple-aholic {App Happy Linky}

I have always had a PC computer... never had a Mac... never learned how to use a Mac... But I am now officially an apple-aholic. I bought my first iPod touch several years ago when they first came out (*without* cameras!) Oh my. Then two years ago I bought myself an iPhone 4, which I would not be able to live without. Seriously... if I ever leave my phone at home, I feel completely naked without it. That's probably not a good thing, but I just love it so much! Here's the cute new case I bought it. I heart polka dots.

Oh, but it didn't stop there. In June, I used all my Scholastic bonus dollars and ordered an iPad from the Teacher's Bonus catalogue. I love it even more than my phone! I feel like a big dork sometimes, walking around with my iPhone and my iPad, but who cares!

I don't use my iPhone at school (unless I forget my camera), but I do use my iPod touch and I plan to use my iPad next year. I loaded all my school music onto my iPod touch (Jack Hartman, Dr. Jean, classical stuff, upbeat tunes, Pete the Cat, etc.) and have it sitting on a speaker dock, so I can access all my music in one place. It works great! As for the iPad... I have a folder of literacy activities and a folder of math activities. So during guided reading they can play reading games and during guided math they can play math games! I haven't decided if I will let three different students use it during the three rounds (about 15 minutes) or if I will just let my "Star of the Day" be the one to use it. I will have to think about that some more!

I saw this "iPad Promise" from Across the Hall in 2nd and knew I would have to do this at the beginning of the year!! I love the one that says "I promise to... treat it like a newborn baby". Too cute!

Finally I am to the point of this rambling blog post... I am linking up with Hope over at 2nd Grade Shenanigans for her App Happy Linky Party, to tell you about some awesome apps you can use in the classroom! Don't you just love the button for it?? Adorable!



So here are some of the apps that I found to use in the classroom next year...

1. Pete the Cat: School Jam (iPhone and iPad) {$0.99}

This is just a "for fun" app. I love Pete, so I couldn't resist. It's a look and find game, then after you can jam with Pete on the guitar. Maybe I can use this as a reward game?

2.Magnetic Letters (iPad only) {$0.99}

This is perfect for practicing sight words. There are upper case and lower case letters. You can also press the camera button to take pictures of the words they spelled.

3. MathTappers: Find Sums (iPhone and iPad) {free}

This is an awesome free game! It's all about compatible numbers. You can use any number from 5-20 or 100 and you have to press the two numbers that add up to that number. You keep finding partners until all the number boxes are gone.

4. Kid's Patterns (iPhone and iPad) {free; more levels for $0.99}

This is a cute patterning game. Students drag the missing object into place. It gets harder as they go along!

5. Sorting Machine (iPhone and iPad) {free; more levels for $0.99}

I really like this game! Students have to drag and drop the objects into the correct order. The rule changes each time. They have to sort by alphabet, numbers, fewer/more, tall/short, sequencing, and more!

6. Free Kids Counting Game (iPad) {free}

Free counting game. Choose up to 5, 10, or 20. If you search for "IKIDSPAD LLC", you will find more *FREE* games from this company--skip counting, word scramble, color and shapes... Check them all out!

7. Letter Muncher (iPhone and iPad) {$1.99}

This is a good game from practicing intial sounds. Students can listen to the sound (speaker by the CH) and drag the pictures that have that sound to the letter muncher or the pictures that don't have that sound to the recycling bin. Cute pictures!

8. Tacky the Penguin (iPhone and iPad) {$3.99}

Ok, this is the most I have spent on an app, but I love Tacky the Penguin and love this story app. They take the picture book and add a few fun effects to it! You can choose to read it yourself, have it read to you, or on auto play it even turns the pages for you! If you search the company "Oceanhouse Media", you will find TONS more books. They have Dr. Seuss, Little Critter, The Berenstain Bears, and other random stories. They are a lot of fun to read and I would love to stock up on all the fun stories, but I can see it adding up quickly. The books range from $0.99 to $5.99.  

9. Reading A to Z Books (iPhone and iPad) {free}

If you use the website Reading A-Z, you will love these! They have free books available. These ones don't have sound; you just read them to yourself. They have one free book from levels aa-P. They have more books you can download for $0.99 or you can download a whole library of one level for $6.99. Just search for "Language Technologies, Inc.".

Well there ya go! I hope you other Apple-loving teachers find something useful here! Love all this fun technology we get to use in our classrooms these days :)

Go check out the other app ideas at 2nd Grade Shenanigans!