December Holiday sites for Kids and Teachers

Priecigus Ziemsvetkus!

That is Latvian for Merry Christmas. Check out this site to learn how to say season’s greetings in multiple languages: http://www.santas.net/howmerrychristmasissaid.htm

As the calendar year is coming to an end, take this chance to share with your students how other cultures and countries are celebrating. Compare and contrast with a venn diagram, use the information for some math problem solving and find some other fun lesson plans!

- December Holiday Lesson Plans and links
http://www.education-world.com/holidays/archives/december.shtml

- Winter Holiday Round up on Factmonster
http://www.factmonster.com/spot/winterholidays1.html

- Christmas Traditions around the World
http://www.santas.net/aroundtheworld.htm

- Christmas around the world by country
http://www.the-north-pole.com/around/

- Hanukkah for Kids
http://www.theholidayspot.com/hanukkah/

- Holidays year round
http://www.theholidayspot.com/

- Track Santa, send him an email (within the browser)! This is a great site to check out on Dec. 24th! http://www.noradsanta.org/en/

Polar Express Resouces

Here are some activities and resources related to this amazing book and film. Some are handouts, some are online games for children (great resource to send home to them as well). Some sites have some fantastic media relating to the book to view and explore. Many of these resources you can incorporate into your lessons and cover some of those technology TEKS.

• Author Website
• Teacher's Guide from Publisher, lots of lesson ideas
• Online Storybook Read by Lou Diamond Phillips • Teacher Created Activities and questions http://www.teachingheart.net/polar.html
• Polar Express game! Awesome graphics, made by the movie company, good keyboarding practice for young ones.
• Movie website/preview

Cyber Safety for Elementary Students and Parents

Cyber Safety – Resources for keeping your children safe on the internet.- http://www.ikeepsafe.org/ “You don’t have to be a Computer Expert to keep your Child Safe Online” This site has basic rules of Internet safety for Children and Parents.
- http://www.thesafeside.com/downloadcenter.html On The Safe Side's downloads page are free resources for schools and families that reinforce and expand the concepts presented in the Stranger Safety and Internet Safety.

A few Activities/Games you can do with your children online are:• http://www.disney.co.uk/DisneyOnline/Safesurfing/- Games created by Disney to help children understand how to safely surf the internet.
• http://pbskids.org/webonauts/- PBS Webonauts Internet Academy

IWB Sketch from SNL

Skype with Author

Author Seymour Simon spoke to grades 3, 4 and 5 via webcam and Skype. The Author shared with students via webcam the story of how he got started, some of his first books and even showed us some documents, video and media from his computer as a timeline of his career and preview of books to come. Visit Mr. Simon's website at: http://www.seymoursimon.com/

Live Webcams of Animals

1. Live Eagle Cam -- This is a live webcam of an eagle sitting on her nest in Maine. The eggs are supposed to hatch the beginning of April! FYI - there is one commercial before the stream starts that may not be totally classroom appropriate.
2. San Diego Zoo
This world famous zoo has streaming videos of many of it’s animal exhibits. Including the Panda. You can also choose to watch a video stream from the past few days, so see if you find a good view of the animal, and select that one to show your students.
3. Penguin Cam
In this live stream from California Academy of Sciences, you can watch penguins from above, from an underwater view, and from their biologists’ point of view. They show conservation programs as well that are happening on a regular basis at the Academy.

Blabberize

Check out this fun online resource http://blabberize.com/
Upload an image, and record your voice to make it talk!

http://teachweb2.wikispaces.com/Blabberize has loads of ideas on how to use it with your students!
Ideas:
• Students can be asked to use text from history to make it come alive! e.g historic speeches or major laws that were passed and made a marked difference
• Have students record songs on poems demonstrating their knowledge of a topic and record the creation with Blabberize. For example: Photosynthesis Raps
• It can be used to encourage students to prepare presentations to introduce themselves.
• Students can be asked to use it to demonstrate their content knowledge.

Perimeter Activities Online

• http://www.mathplayground.com/area_perimeter.html - Has ruler to line up on shape to measure and calculater perimeter, checks answers
• http://www.funbrain.com/poly/index.html - Online game permimetter of shapes can check answers
• http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks2/maths/perimeter_and_area/index.html - perimeter of 2D objects

Document Camera as a Scanner

Great news, both of my campuses now have Samsung document cameras for each teacher! For those of you excited to learn about uses for the document camera, or want to look at how to set it up, check out Document Camera Tips on the teacher guides wiki. I love the 101 Ways Booklet_Online View.pdf

Do you need a scanner???? YOU have one! Turn your document camera into a scanner!
Step 1: Put what you want scanned under the camera
Step 2: Take a still picture of it! It will prompt you where to save!

Blogs about Technology

I'm excited to be able to brag about my teachers and their use of technology in the Elementary Classroom. My New Year Resolution, is to update the school blogs more often. Check out Gattis Tech Blog and Double File Trail Tech Blog.