Presidential Wordles

My 5th grade students are studying the US Government and Presidents so we are making Wordles to learn some facts about the Presidents. First we copy and paste some biographical information about each president from the USA for Kids web site in the Wordle creator. The students change fonts, colors, layout, and can even remove words from the image. The images are pulled into a word-processing software such as Microsoft Word and the students pick a few key words from their Wordle to explain how it relates to the president and we add an image of each president, too.

We will also be creating some character trait Wordles as they finish novels in the classroom.

Warholize Me

THIS IS MY 15 MINUTES OF FAME! The art teacher (Mille Watson) and I are teaching an enrichment class for 5th grade. Our topic is Andy Warhol and we have so many fun art and technology activities for the students to use. We are beginning the presentation with a great PowerPoint slideshow created by Mrs. Rouse of Rock Ledge Elementary in Wisconsin. Next the students take digital pictures of themselves in fun poses and we make them into Warhol style Pop Art using the Warholizer at Big Huge Labs! Finally, we save a clipart image that the students choose and make it into line art use BeFunky's Cartoonizer. We then pull the line art drawing into a label making program like The Print Shop. We use the image as the label and print 6-8 identical images on a page of card stock paper. The students then use different art media (pastels, watercolors, etc.) to color their images to make Pop Art! These fun online tools make learning about Andy Warhol and Pop Art so much fun!

Make A Flake Snowflakes

LET IT SNOW! It's time to celebrate some wintery weather and my 2nd grade students are having fun designing their own snowflakes by using Make A Flake. It is fun just to play with or you can use the snowflakes in projects.

The students made a snowflake online and then saved it as an image file. We pulled the images into a word processing software, and then typed and formatted a snowflake poem. We added a border and printed them out. Students are encouraged to also use the web site at home to make decorations for the winter holidays.