Techy Tuesday

Happy Tuesday, friends! I don't know about you, but coming back on a dreary Monday after daylight savings was rough. Add a rainy Tuesday, and my kids were struggling. We plowed through it, and I'm crossing my fingers for a little sunshine tomorrow!

Anywho, I've got a few fun things to share... We love love LOVE our iPad Minis from Donors Choose. Here's 2 apps that we're hooked on. First off, I'm loving the Dr. Seuss digital bookshelf. It's free, and it's basically an easy way to organize your Dr. Seuss e-books. If you haven't played around with the Seuss books for iPad, you're missing out! They are absolutely incredible. There's 3 options for each book. Read To Me, Read It Myself & Auto Play. Right now my kiddos are listening to Cat in the Hat as their listening center, and it's pretty cool! The bookshelf also allows you to lock the app, preventing students from purchasing more books, which is super helpful! 

Also hooked on the Magnetic Alphabet app. It sounds silly, but we use it literally all the time. Mostly, I use it to introduce new phonics skills, rather than using those letter tiles that I hate sorting and putting away. It allows the students to drag letters and plop them on the board, then they can drag them back or erase the whole thing. The free version gives you one background and limited magnets. Love it.

Hope you can use these in your room!

You're a Mean One...

Alas, I have finished my Christmas door decorating. Every time I thought I was done, I just kept adding things! Our school is begininning to look as if Christmas threw up in the halls, and I wouldn't have it any other way!  Check out some of the things we did to make our "Grinchy" door decoration!

As I was painting the Grinch and hanging him up, one of the students in our building said "You need a Max!" I went YES I DO! So I set about the process of finding the perfect picture of my little pup, Charlie... I learned that if you're in a PDF file, you have the ability to blow it up and print is as a poster. So that's just what I did to make a larger-than-life-size picture of my doggie. I added the bone to his head to make the PERFECT Max for our doorway!

I wanted to find a way to include pictures of my kiddos, and thought... what better way than to turn them into Who's! So that's just what we did. I drew 4 different Who bodies for them to choose from, and took their picture with their mouth open so it looked like they were singing. I think the final product is nothing short of hilarious. Check these babies out!

I added the snow and trees as an afterthought, as the Who's appeared to be flying... Oh well! And CHECK out these awesome snowflakes that my little firsts made! I was SO surprised at how well they followed directions and cut through all those folds of paper! Made me smile :-)

Stay tuned... Our door decorating contest officially ends tomorrow, and I plan on taking pictures of all the doors in our building. We sort-of went a little overboard... Go big or go home, eh?