Category Archives: Kindergarten

Review Using ActiVotes & QUIA

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As the benchmark testing is quickly approaching, many teachers are asking for fun activities they can do with their kids to review.  I really like the idea of using the ActiVotes because the students tend to be more engaged and excited about review whenever the ActiVotes are in the room.  My students always loved using my Quia website too, so why not put the two together? In this review lesson, I projected the teachers Quia site with a rags to riches activity on 2nd Grade map skills.  Rags to Riches is similar to “Who wants to be a millionaire” so they kids get excited that they are earning pretend money as they answer the questions correctly.  You can also change the currency.  In this activity, they were trying to win a million Skittles rather than dollars.

From QUIA Review Game

All teachers in Henrico have access to a Quia site.   Quia is a nice  option for review because you can create your own activities with the specific questions that you want your students to know the answers to.  You can also borrow activities from others if you find a great Quia activity that you like on other persons page.   If you love their activity, but there is a question or two that you dislike, you can always edit the other persons work and make it fit your needs.  If you would like help setting one up for your classroom, please sign up for a consultation.

States of Matter Videos and Sort in Pages

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Looking for an activity on states of matter?  It could be the first introduction for Kindergarten students, or a review for the upper grades, as this SOL is touched on in all grade levels.  To create this activity, I went to United Streaming and search for states of matter for grades K-2.  You can also search by the SOL number, which is a nice feature.  Rather than downloading the entire 25 minute video, I just downloaded the segments that I needed…a video for solids, another for liquids, and one more for gasses.  After successfully downloading to my desktop, I opened up a new Pages document simply pulled the video clip into my pages document.  I re-sized the videos (just like you would a picture) to make it fit above the 3 columns.  To play the video, the students click 2 times.  To pause the video, click once.  There is a remote control under the quick time tab in the inspector (blue circle with the i) that allows you to navigate through the movie. After watching each video, the students found the pictures of items that belong in that category, and moved them to the correct box. You can make the boxes with the shape tool.  Just be sure to push the boxes to the background so that the pictures can be placed on top.

Thanksgiving Pixie Activities

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In preparation for the Thanksgiving holiday, some of my Kindergarten and first grade classes have been completing these Pixie activities.  In the first activity, the students delete one of the pilgrims, so that only a boy OR a girl pilgrim are left.  Next, they take an oval shaped picture of their face and put it on the pilgrims face.  Then I had the students complete the speech bubble “I am thankful for…”  Finally, the students used the paint can and spray paint to add a fall scene in the background.

On the second activity, we discussed how the First Thanksgiving was a celebration of the harvest among the Pilgrims and Indians.  Students searched through the clip art folders under the stickers tab to add foods to the table that would have been served at the Thanksgiving celebration of 1621.  We discussed how some of the foods we eat today at Thanksgiving are much different than the foods that were available to people at the First Thanksgiving.

Kindergarten 5 Senses

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The kindergarten students have been learning about the 5 senses, so I had a them create a Pixie and label the 5 senses.  They took a picture of themselves on Pixie, glued the picture to the background, and then labeled their eyes, nose, mouth, ears, and hand with the 5 senses.  We practiced resizing and changing the color of the font.  After the students saved their work to their folders, I was able to go back, open all of them up, and then share it as a movie with this cute 5 senses song.  The students loved seeing their work put altogether on the big screen.  If you want to learn how to turn your students Pixie slides into a presentation, please sign up for a consultation.

5 Senses from Karen Hues on Vimeo.

Kindergarten Past & Present Pixie

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The Kindergarten students have been studying the difference between past & present, so I created this activity in Pixie where students can sort the objects into either the Past or the Present.

I would call out a topic such as Presidents, transportation, communication, cooking, etc. and they would have to find the pictures and sort them as either past or present. By going through the pictures one category at a time, we were able to discuss the difference between the past and the present for each topic. In our discussion we talked about how some items, for example the newspaper, is still available today, but that in the past they only had the newspaper, letters, word of mouth to inform them what was going on in the world. In contrast, today we have the television and internet where we can find the news very quickly. This activity was not only a great way to practice sorting, but also led to meaningful discussions on how life was in the past.

Kindergarten Sorting Activity Using Pixie

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The Kindergarten students in Mrs. Cummings class at Springfield Park have been learning about sorting, so I had them do several fun sorting activities using Pixie. Her boys and girls did a great job clicking and dragging the objects to sort them. The students were asked to help Johnny Appleseed sort the apples into 4 barrels.
Students must help Johnny sort the apples into the correct barrels by color. Students were also asked to sort these objects by shape. They loved using real world objects to sort. The great news is that all of the fabulous sorting activities can be found, already created, in Pixie. Simply open up Pixie and Click on Open at the top of the screen. From there, click on Activities. It will open up a variety of different subjects. The sorting activities can be found in the Math folder. Have fun sorting!!

Kindergarten Track Pad Lessons

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Over the last few weeks I have been using this great site to introduce Kindergarten students to the laptop:
http://www.poissonrouge.com/bugs/index
Here students can practice using the track pad to move the arrow and click & drag. I’ve been very impressed by the number of Kindergarten students I have seen practicing using only one hand! Way to go!!

Remember to allow your students time to continue practicing on the computers. Keep up the great work!