Using the iPad to Expand Learning

February 2, 2022February 2, 2022 / Kristi Meeuwse / Leave a comment

Recently, one of my reading groups read Robert Kalan’s book Rain. The book is illustrated by Donald Crews. The children loved how Crews used the word “rain” over and over to create the illusion of rain falling. As we were discussing this, one of the girls asked if they could create their own illustration, but using the word snow instead. They drew snowy pictures in their Drawing Pad app and started typing the word snow all in the picture. Since they aren’t terribly familiar with the keyboard and where the letters all are, it took them a while to type “snow” the first time. They spent a lot of time discussing how to turn the word so that it looked like snow falling and what size the word should be. After going through this a few times, they realized that it would take them a really long time to type the word snow as many times as would be needed to create the same illusion as in the book Rain. Here are a couple of examples:

The great thing about this activity was it was totally child-driven. There was rich conversation about how and where to put the words, at what angle, and what size would be appropriate. They also asked if there were other books by Donald Crews so we will investigate Ten Black Dots and see what that inspires!

One of the things I have learned while teaching and learning with iPads is we have to be open to letting our students (no matter how young) take ownership of their learning and allow them time to explore their ideas. This activity was not in my lesson plans, but what they discussed, thought about, and created was far better than what I had planned.

How have your students taken ownership and expanded their learning?

Helping Young Children Make Sense of Racial and Ethnic Differences

August 4, 2020 / Kristi Meeuwse / Leave a comment

Young children live in a social world. And while many believe they do not have awareness of racial and ethnic differences, research is showing otherwise. Studies show that as early as 6 months, a baby’s brain can notice racial differences and by the age of 4, young children have learned to evaluate people based on race; thus affecting their choices with whom they play and befriend. They learn bias from an early age from their first teachers- their parents. The language we use to talk about racial and ethnic differences is a major influence in how children perceive those who are “different”. The classroom environment also influences how children perceive race and ethnic differences; and as educators, we must be vigilant in our observing and in our actions . Take a close look around the classroom environment? Do classroom books represent a diverse cross-section of cultures? Are puzzles, dolls, and classroom images multi-cultural? Are children segregating themselves within group activities? Are we providing meaningful cultural opportunities that allow children to develop cultural literacy?

It’s important that we model how we want children to respond to others who are different from them. We also must acknowledge that racial bias exists and examine our own biases. Educators and parents should actively teach students to be respectful and kind when discussing racial differences. Use positive language when young children point out differences or ask questions. Rebut or re-state comments calmly if the child states something that is negative or troubling. “Her skin is funny looking” is rebutted as “Her skin is a different color than yours, It’s not funny looking. People are different colors.”

Most early childhood classes explore an “All About Me” unit of study early in the school year. This is the perfect time to highlight how everyone is unique and special just as they are and that differences are good things, not bad. To that end, my friend Marc Faulder, an Apple Distinguished Educator, and I co-authored a book called A Rainbow of Friends. It is uploaded into the Apple Bookstore and can be downloaded here. It’s a short book with activities to help children explore cultural similarities and differences in a positive manner.

Here is the Table of Contents. There are creative opportunities in drawing, photography, and music using the iPad.

Now is the time to be a part of the movement…to make a positive impact in changing our young students’ perspectives toward racial equity.

Making Photo Characters with iPad and Pages

June 14, 2020June 14, 2020 / Kristi Meeuwse / Leave a comment

Are you a someone who likes to doodle? Do you see animal shapes in clouds, or faces in wood grain? During our COVID shut down, I have had a lot of opportunity to take walks and look at the ordinary in new ways. It’s easy to become a bit stagnant when sitting at home all the time!

Many years ago, I had a kindergarten student who loved a particular Disney princess. She drew that princess every time she had crayons and paper. In fact, when given an activity page, she would transform whatever was on that page into the princess. The one that stands out most in my memory is when we were working on the letter Ww . There was a walrus on the paper and she added big puffy hair, a tiara, and a princess dress to the walrus. While singularly focused on the one character, she certainly demonstrated a lot of creativity in transforming regular objects into the princess.

Young children have the unique ability to imagine, pretend, and create. They can make trucks and trains out of boxes, pencils, and blocks. They can transform their imaginary world without much guidance or even encouragement. However, we can channel this creativity to enhance their learning in a variety of ways with tools readily available. Through using the camera on the iPad, students can take ordinary photos and transform them into characters using the Markup tool in the photo editor.

If you need a little help getting started, I created an interactive, downloadable Pages template here. For more photo character activities, my good friend and colleague Marc Faulder, created the book Raindrop, in which ordinary raindrop photos are transformed into characters. Students can create speech bubbles and a comic using their raindrop characters.

I would love to see what characters your students (or your own children) are creating!

Going on a Shape Search with Keynote

April 30, 2020April 30, 2020 / Kristi Meeuwse / Leave a comment

Being at home during the COVID-19 shutdown has provided me a lot of time to get outside and walk the neighborhood. I am noticing things I haven’t seen before, seeing neighbors that I haven’t seen in a long time, and noticing things that have always been there but I haven’t taken the time to look at. The key words here are “taking the time”…

Young children always seem to notice everything don’t they? Maybe even things we wish they didn’t notice. They are keen observers and are full of natural curiosity so taking them on a walk is a good way to engage in rich conversation, get fresh air and exercise, as well as strengthen their vocabulary.

A good place to start is looking for shapes in their natural environment. Once you start looking, they will find shapes every where. You can start with two dimensional shapes and then progress to three dimensional shapes. Here are a few terms to use:

Equal (Are the sides equal?)
Vertices (Where the sides meet, the corners)
Side (The outside edge of the shape)
Three dimensional shape terms: sphere, cone, pyramid, rectangular prism, cylinder)

You can use your phone (or iPad) to take photos of these environmental items to create a shape book. I have created a Keynote slide deck called Shape Search and am sharing it with you here: Shape Search. If opened on an iPad, your child can use an Apple Pencil, stylus, or finger to trace the shapes in the photos, copy the shape words, and draw their own shapes inside the deck. You can even upload any photos you take on your own shape walk.

Despite the interruption in routines, the uncertainty of what is ahead, and school closures, one thing I have learned through this time is our focus becomes our reality. I have tried to find ways each day to try something new or do something I enjoy. I encourage you to get outside with your young children and look for the unexpected.

Enhancing the Creative Process in Young Children with iPad

March 6, 2020 / Kristi Meeuwse / Leave a comment

Recently, I was chatting with a colleague who teaches first grade. She indicated some of her students are reluctant to tap into their creative sides for fear of “not doing it right”. Too often, school can “teach” the creativity right out of our students by either consciously or unconsciously reinforcing the need to be “right”. I’m sure you’ve heard your students say, “I don’t like to draw” or even, “I can’t draw”. Often the root of this is the fear of not doing it correctly or the lack of opportunities to explore and try new things.

In an Edutopia interview titled Mo Willems on the Lost Art of Being Silly, the idea of helping children explore their own imaginative creativity is discussed. Mo Willems shares he intentionally designs his characters so that children can easily copy them. This gives the child a sense of accomplishment and a starting point for exploring creativity. Taking a well-known character and creating a new scenario for the character can be a “stepping stone” for the child. I do believe in nurturing children’s creative selves and encouraging them to create original works; however, some children need guidance and support to jumpstart their imaginations. When we tell a child not to “copy” the example, we can inadvertently stimulate that “fear of being wrong” mindset.

Research from the Big Ideas, Little Learners: Early Childhood Trends report showed that “99% of kindergarteners score as creative geniuses, while only 3% of people remain in that category by age 25…Torrance Creativity Scores decrease the most among kids in kindergarten to third grade” (2019, p 20). This was an eye-opening statistic for me.

So, taking the idea from the Edutopia interview, I sat with a class and had them tell me their favorite book characters. We then talked about ways these characters could engage in something either similar or quite different from the books they were in. We created an anchor chart and then the students used the iPad to sketch out an idea. Here are a few examples. Pete the Cat had a new adventure playing soccer and when he didn’t score a goal, did Pete cry? Goodness no! Naughty David finally did something that his teacher approved of and read a book; and lastly, the Pigeon gets a taco and didn’t want to share it. Next steps could involve the children using Book Creator to create their own short story with these characters, using Flipgrid or Explain Everything to tell about their stories, creating a Clips video using their drawings, or using GarageBand to add sound effects and/or voice over. This activity can also stand alone if desired. The idea is to get children to brainstorm and extend their ideas to ignite their creativity. (Just like I got the idea to have the children use familiar characters to innovate an idea…even adults need a jumpstart once in a while.)

Early Childhood educators are masters at creativity. I would love to see how some of you are innovating content and stimulating creativity in your classroom! If you need a resource, try the Everyone Can Create Teacher Guide for Early Learners. It provides sequenced activities for young children to practice, and learn new ways to creatively demonstrate learning on the iPad. As I wrote the activities for this guide, I used actual activities from my own days in the kindergarten classroom.

I’d love to hear your ideas!

Pete the Cat is the creation of Eric Litwin

No David is the creation of David Shannon

The Pigeon books are the creation of Mo Willems

Investigating Animals with Young Children and the iPad

February 4, 2020February 4, 2020 / Kristi Meeuwse / Leave a comment

Children are naturally inquisitive about animals and nature. When I was teaching kindergarten, my students would always be excited to tell me about a new pet, or a recent trip to the zoo or the aquarium. In fact, the first words of many children are dog, bunny, or cat. They have an innate desire to make sense of their world, especially when it comes to other living things.

Research shows that spending time with animals builds self-esteem in young children as well as empathy. They learn to nurture and care for another living thing. Some schools have therapy animals that come to school and children read aloud to them or sit quietly with them, providing a sense of security. Often, animals provide opportunities to demonstrate care and learn responsibility. Author Patty Selly states “Love for animals tends to generalize to other living things such as plants and nature”.

With this built-in curiosity, providing opportunities for children to investigate and create around the topic of animals is an easy way to engage students in meaningful ways. In my last blog post, I wrote about a 3 book series co-authored with my friend Marc Faulder. That post focused on working with young children in creating a sustainable environment and looked primarily at plants. This week, I will share the second book in the series Animals.

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This book provides opportunities for children to explore animals with drawing, video creation, photography, and music on the iPad. These activities are appropriate for early childhood students, but can easily be scaled up through elementary grades. My students especially loved incorporating music activities. In this book, children can use GarageBand to create animal sound patterns in math, use the voice recorder to tell about an animal and its habitat, which helps with language and communication, as well as create their own soundtrack to represent an animal habitat.

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Students also get an opportunity to combine drawing and recording skills for a culminating animal project in the book. All of their work is captured in their learning journal.

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The iPad is a great tool to capture student creativity and extend learning opportunities, no matter what age. Tapping into the natural curiosity and attraction of animals and student creativity takes learning to a deeper level.

Tag us on Twitter and let us know what you think, or share some of your student work!

@KristiMeeuwse

@MarcWithersey

Me and My World-Teaching Sustainability to Young Children

January 13, 2020January 13, 2020 / Kristi Meeuwse / Leave a comment

A greater focus has been placed on our environment in recent years. We hear the terms sustainability, climate crisis, global warming, carbon footprint, hazardous waste, greenhouse effect, and more…all aimed at raising awareness. Some of these topics can seem confusing even for adults; so, how do we teach young children about these concepts in a way that they can understand?

Sustainability is an abstract concept, but it is really just a collection of good practices. It is important to involve children in activities in nature to make caring for the environment a natural part of their lives, and at the same time, bring their impact to the forefront.

Incorporating a project approach in early childhood is an appropriate way to emphasize sustainability fundamentals. This method helps young children develop a personal connection to their own actions. Early Childhood Professor and researcher Lillian Katz found it most beneficial to nurture the intellectual development in young children, rather than focusing solely on academic development. Intellectual development focuses on reasoning, hypothesizing, predicting, and analyzing ideas. A project based approach encourages young children to make the best sense of their experiences and their environment. It allows them to see the purpose of their efforts (Katz, 2001).

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With these tenets in mind, fellow Apple Distinguished Educator and Early Years teacher Marc Faulder and I co-wrote a 3 book Young Children Can Create series focused on increasing environmental awareness for young children. These are teacher guides with step-by-step directions for students.

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The first book is Plants. Using an iPad, students work through a series of creative activities involving drawing, photography, video, and music across ELA, Math, Social Studies and Science. Student work for all three books is collected in a digital learning journal.

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Here is a sample page from the drawing section:

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Students learn the importance of plants and the plant life cycle. The iPad activities allow for content creation and sharing. I will discuss the other two books in future posts. Take a look and see what you think!

Coding With Young Learners

January 3, 2020 / Kristi Meeuwse / 2 Comments

I’m often asked about coding with young learners. Is it appropriate? Is it too difficult? When done well, it is both appropriate and fun for young children to dive into the coding world.

Coding is a basic literacy in our digital age; and just like reading and writing, it is best to start early. Our students are surrounded by digital devices, toys, and activities. Learning how they work not only enhances computational thinking, it strengthens other skills in reading and math, including spelling and sequencing. Additionally, coding requires students to think about thinking–these metacognitive processes really hone problem solving skills.

image from Pixabay.com

My kindergarten students loved working with Kodable on their iPad devices. You can read more about that here, here, and here. I found that even students who gave up easily when confronted with a challenge, persevered when learning how to code. I saw a different kind of confidence in them and increased communication as they worked with other students to use logic to solve problems. Because there are so many variations to solving problems, creativity is also improved.

For students who can read, Apple has developed a comprehensive coding curriculum through Swift Playgrounds. Swift is easy to learn and students age 8 and up can quickly learn coding fundamentals. For younger students, ScratchJr, (ages 5-7) allows students to solve problems and design projects. Kodable has activities for ages 4-7 and another set of activities for ages 7-10. You can also check out CodeSpark Academy, (ages 5-9) and Code Monkey Jr (ages PreK to K).

Lastly, check out the Hour of Code. It has a Pre-Reader Express activity that is great for young children to learn the basics of drag and drop and computer science. They are able to create a game or story at the end. There are also great submissions from others for the Hour of Code that are inspirational to see.

h-and-a-under-table

Just about every type of business today needs computer literate people. In addition to the many skills enhanced by coding, teaching children to code provides a competitive advantage in today’s digital society.

Creation for Early Learners Using the iPad

July 9, 2019 / Kristi Meeuwse / 2 Comments

One of the greatest misperceptions about our youngest learners and meaningful technology use, is they “are too young” to be able to do that. Since the beginning of this blog, I’ve had hundreds of visitors in my kindergarten classroom to see my “littles” in action creating and demonstrating learning with an iPad. I would present and share their work to a variety of educators, who would often respond, “My kids can’t do that”. My nearly 30 years as an early childhood educator have proven to me that isn’t the case. Our youngest learners are alive with imagination and creativity. I’ve watched them turn a stick found on the playground into a magic wand granting fairy wishes or into a rocket ship blasting off into space. I’ve watched them play football with absolutely nothing but a pretend ball and 4 boys who were sure they were the ones who caught it. I’ve seen paintings described by the young artist in minute detail that would stump the most astute Rorschach interpreter. Yes, my friends, our young children can create. But, how often are we allowing them to explore this creativity? When do our students stop “pretending” or “imagining”? When we prescribe worksheets or other standardized activities with rigid learning outcomes, we rob our students of the ability to create their own learning. When we get “busy” with teaching standards and ensuring compliance, we can stifle imaginations and communicate the not-so-subtle message of my way or the highway. This also creates a crippling effect in our students of needing affirmation every step of the way for fear of doing something wrong. (Is this right? Is THIS right? What do I do next?)

Recently, I was given the very great honor by Apple to provide appropriate learning activities for young learners in the areas of drawing, photography, video, and music. I worked with another good friend and Apple Distinguished Educator from Canada, Gillian Madeley, to create project ideas, as well as cross-curricular activities in these same areas. The project was recently published as Everyone Can Create Teacher Guide for Early Learners. You can download the book free here.

This guide is a companion to the Everyone Can Create series also found in the iBook Store for grades 4 and up. Here is a screen shot from the Early Learner’s Teacher Guide:

The guide provides easy to follow lessons for teachers of young children to engage them in the creative process. Each section builds to a culminating project. There are also ideas for cross-curricular ideas in each medium. You don’t have to be an art teacher, media teacher or music teacher to incorporate these ideas. You just have to be willing to try some new things and give your students an opportunity to explore their creativity,

Take a look and let me know what you think. I would love your feedback!

Kristi

Adapting Classic Stories with iPad

March 18, 2019March 18, 2019 / Kristi Meeuwse / 1 Comment

Children love classic fairy tales and many early childhood classrooms incorporate them into a unit of study. These tales have stood the test of time and when children hear these stories, they often imagine themselves playing a role in them.

One of my kindergarten students’ favorite fairy tales is The Gingerbread Man. There are many classic renditions of the story as well as more modern takes on the old tale…such as The Gingerbread Baby and Gingerbread Friends by Jan Brett, Gingerbread Girl by Lisa Campbell Ernst, The Gingerbread Pirates by Kristin Kladstrup, The Gingerbread Boy by Paul Galdone, along with many other titles. However, one of their favorites is The Stinky Cheese Man by Jon Scieszka. They love the twist of the Stinky Cheese Man that no one wants to eat, in place of the yummy gingerbread man that everyone wants to eat. This twist allows children to imagine other characters in a similar storyline. By exploring this concept, students can develop critical thinking skills, sequencing skills, as well as literary elements such as character, plot, and setting.

Adapting stories with the iPad affords the opportunity to incorporate the built-in Camera app and take the learning outside. The children would consider what “twist” they would like to use in their own story, decide on a character, and choose where the character would run. After taking a photograph of the setting, the children would use the Markup tool in Photos to draw their character in the setting. Text can also be added in Markup if the character is speaking.

Marc Faulder, an Apple Distinguished Educator friend in the UK, created this project and had his students adapt The Gingerbread Man story through an outdoor activity. You can read about this adventure here.

Here are a couple of pictures from an early childhood classroom trying the activity with their iPad devices: The first is a chocolate chip cookie running down the sidewalk and the second is a slice of pizza going down the slide on the playground.

By integrating a child’s natural love for stories and the iPad, students have a unique ability to explore and capture their environment, as well as tell a story in a creative and fun way.

Download Your Free ‘Young Children Can Create’ Guides Now.

These 4 free guides are published on the Apple Book Store right now and written in partnership with Kristi Meeuwse, Marc Faulder, Jason Milner. Read more about The Young Children Can Create series here-

The Rich Potential of Children’s Photography

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