I’m always amazed when I walk into a Kindergarten classroom. Kindergarteners are the most energetic students in the district, and they are no fear of learning something new.
This fall our kindergarten classes are studying life science, more specifically the plant life cycle. To do this each kindergarten class starts with a pumpkin. They carve the pumpkin and remove the seeds, and yes they also decorate the pumpkin for Halloween, but that is beyond the scope of this blog post. After the seeds have dried, they are planed in cups, each student has their own cup and they will monitor the plant growth. After a few weeks, the I was asked to incorporate technology into this activity.
To help bring interest to this activity and set up the iPad activity, I used PBS Learning Media. After a search I found the perfect resource: Postcards from Buster: The Giant Oregon Pumpkins.
Resource link: http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/b8f3e839-8b29-4d5b-97da-a733f4c5244e/. (Note: this is a premium resource)
Buster Baxter is a character that kids love. In this series Buster is traveling with his dad, and Buster sends video postcards to his friends. In the segment “The Giant Oregon Pumpkins”. They visit a farm where they grow, giant pumpkins. Students were amazed to see the large pumpkins and learned the process of growing the seeds was similar to what they were doing. Also, in the video, the pumpkin growers measured the pumpkins. This set the stage for the iPad activity.
For the iPad activity I downloaded and installed the app “StoryKit” on all of the kindergarten iPads. This app is for the iPhone, but it works well for iPad Minis, which is what we use In our kindergarten classes.
The StoryKit App is a very simple app that allows you to create a simple book. Students can take and add pictures, decorate the page with a simple paint tool, type text and do an audio recording. It’s a simple but functional app, and perfect for young students.
App link: StoryKit by ICDL Foundation
https://appsto.re/us/dUDOt.i
The classroom teacher had every student get both their iPads and the cup containing the Pumpkin seed. After everyone was seated, we started. I showed students how to open the StoryKit App, take a picture and add that picture to their new story. We (the classroom teacher and I) were amazed at how quickly the Kindergarteners could do this, and shortly we were ready for the next step, decorating: I show student how to access the simple drawing tools and soon, the pictures were sitting on highly decorated backdrops.
For the last step we used the audio recorder feature in StoryKit and students spoke about the steps they took to plant the seeds, how they were going to care for their seeds and what they were going to do when they took the seeds home.
What's next? I will visit again in a week and we will add another page to this story, and hopefully take pictures of some growth in the pumpkin seeds and record more observations and of course, paint another page.