Title:  Kid Pics Introduction
 Date:  February 4, 2002

Time Block: Centers Time
Age Group: Kindergarten
Group Size: 2 Children
Curriculum: Math 
 

National Educational Technology Standards: PI 5, PI 9

Michigan Mathematics Curriculum Standards: 1.1, 2.3

Learning Objectives:
 1. To improve fine motor skills by using the mouse to move through the program.
 2. To encourage familiarity with the computer and computer software.
 3. To enhance creativity by deciding what to draw on Kid Pics.

Materials:
Computer
Kid Pics Software
Printer
Paper

Motivation:
 “Today as one of your choices, we will be opening Mrs. Mazza’s computer for you to use.  We are going to be playing with Kid Pics and drawing pictures.  I can only take two of you at a time, but over the next few days I will make sure everyone gets a chance to try it out.”

Procedure:
 1. When the students come to the computer, tell them, “Today you are going to make a picture on Kid Pics.”  Show the children that they can draw with the pencil, write letters or words or use the stamps.
 2. Tell the first student, “You can draw whatever you want on your picture.”  Allow the child to explore the program and experiment drawing his picture.  Give each child about 5 minutes to draw his picture.  Give warnings when the time is almost up.
 3. Ask the student, “What else can you put on your picture?”  “How could you draw your picture?”  “What different stamps could you put on your picture?”  “See if you can find other things to do by trying different buttons.”
 4. When the student is done with their picture, help them type their name on their picture using the pencil or the stamps.
 5. Print their picture and allow the next student to begin their picture. Encourage the first student to teach the other student how to use the program.

Closure:
 Make copies of their pictures and allow the students to take their picture home.
 

Kristyn works on writing her name.  She is learning what order to place the letters.	Megan practiced her counting skills. She has 1 dog, 2 ducks, 3 starts, 4 roses, etc. Megan counts all the way up to 11 birds.

Title:  Exploring Trees
Date:  February 13, 2002

Time Block: Centers
Age Group: Kindergarten
Group Size: 4 Children
Curriculum: Science

National Educational Technology Standards: PI 1, PI 9

Michigan Essential Goals and Objectives for Science Education: C1, C2, C5, LO1, LO5, LEC3, LEC4, PME1

Learning Objectives
 1. To increase recall skills by remembering their ideas and predictions while watching the video.
 2. To encourage observation skills by talking about what it is like looking through the video camera lens.
 3. To expand vocabulary by talking about what they were doing in the video.

Materials:
 Video Camera
 Television and VCR
 Tree parts (branches, leaves, stumps, pine cones, etc.)

Motivation:
 “How many of you have seen some trees or tree branches that have fallen down from the snowstorms?”  Listen to their responses.  “Today I brought in some branches that have fallen from some trees in my backyard and we also have a tree stump.  I also have some books about trees and I am wondering if you can find out what type of trees the branches and leaves came from.  For one of your choices, you can come and look at the tree stump, branches, and tree books.”

Procedure:
 1. When the students come to the center, allow them to explore the tree items at their own pace.
 2. Questions to encourage their exploration: 
  “What type of tree do you think these leaves came from?”
  “Do you think these leaves came from the same tree as the pine cones?”
  “What makes the leaves and pine cones different?  The same?”
 3. When the children notice the video camera allow them to look through the camera.  Ask, “What do you see?”
 4. Revisit on another day.  Ask the students, “Do you remember when we video tapped you looking at all the tree things?  What do you remember about that?”
 5. Watch the video.  Questions to ask while watching the video:
  “What were you doing there?”  “Do you remember what you did next?”  “What were you thinking when you tried that?”  “Do you remember looking through the video camera at this point?” 

Closure:
 Write down the children's words while watching the video to get a better idea of their understanding about trees and how trees grow.
 

Title:  Adopting a Tree 
Date:  February 27, 2002

Time Block: Centers
Age Group: Kindergarten
Group Size: 22 Children
Curriculum: Science

National Educational Technology Standards: PI 5, PI 9

Michigan Essential Goals and Objectives for Science Education: C5, C6, R2, LO1

Michigan Mathematics Curriculum Standards: 2.3, 2.5, 3.6, 4.10
 

Learning Objectives:
1. To improve observation skills by noticing the characteristics of their trees.
2. To enhance group participation by taking pictures of each other and helping each other measure their trees.
 3. To improve recall skills by using the pictures to remember what type of    tree they have.

Materials:
 Permission slips for walk
 Digital Camera
 Pine tree/Oak tree Chart
 Names of all children on small pieces of paper
 Glue

Motivation:
 “Today, for choices we are going to take a walk to the park across the street.  We have been talking about trees a lot lately and we are going to look at some of the trees in the park.  When we get there, each of you are going to pick out a tree that you are going adopt and learn all about.  We are going to take pictures of our trees to help us remember what our trees look like.”

Procedure:
1. Take children to the park across the street from the school.
2. Divide up the children among the different types of trees in the park.  Let the children pick the tree they would like to adopt.
3. Tell the children, “Look real close at your trees.  Look at what type of bark they have and their leaves.  Try to remember everything you can about your tree.  Think about whether your tree is a pine tree or oak tree.” 
 4. Make sure each child has picked out a tree.  Help the children take    pictures of each other standing by their trees with the digital camera. 
 5.  When the children are back in the room, ask, “What is the difference    between a pine tree and an oak tree?”  Listen to their responses.  Tell the    students, “Think about your tree and if it is a pine tree or an oak tree.”
 6. Show the students the chart or oak trees or pine trees.  Tell the students,    “We are going to graph our trees to see if we have more pine trees or more   oak trees.  We are going to use the pictures we took with our trees to help    us remember what our tree looks like.”
 7. Call each child up one at a time.  Find their picture on the digital camera.     Show picture to child and ask, “Does yours look like a pine tree or an oak    tree?”  Help them decide and tape their name under the correct heading on   the graph.
 8. After all the children have graphed their tree, ask, “Which type of trees do   we have the most of?”  “How do you know?”  “How can we check to see    if we are right?”  “Which type of trees do we have the least of?”  “How do   you know?”

Closure:
 Display chart in room for children to look at.  Print up pictures of the children with their trees 
 

Title:  Kid Pics Tree Drawings
Date:  March 18, 2002

Time Block: Centers Time
Age Group: Kindergarten
Group Size: 2 Children
Curriculum: Language Arts and Science

National Educational Technology Standards: PI 1, PI 4, PI 5, PI 9

Michigan Essential Goals and Objectives for Science Education:  C5, C6, R2, LO1, LO5

Michigan Mathematics Curriculum Standards: 3.6

Learning Objectives:
 1. To improve fine motor skills by using the mouse to move through the program. 
 2. To encourage recall skills by remembering how to use the computer and computer software.
 3. To enhance creativity by writing about their trees.

Materials:
Computer
Kid Pics Software
Printer
Paper

Motivation:
 “Today we are going to give you another chance to work on the Kid Pics program.  This time, we want you to draw a picture about your trees.  Think of some words you could write about your tree and how you want your tree to look.”

Procedure:
 1. When the student comes to the computer, ask, ”Do you remember how to use the Kid Pics program?”  If the child needs additional help, remind him how to use the program.  If the child remembers how to use Kid Pics allow him to begin working.
 2. Remind the child that the picture they create has to be about their tree.
 3. When the child has finished their picture, ask, “What would you like to say about your tree picture?”  Help the child sound out the words that he wants to write about his tree.
 4. Remind the child to put his name on his picture using the stamps or the pencil.

Closure:
 Print out pictures and make copies for the children to take home.

The children's hand drawings are  difficult to assess for the children's drawings.  The  fine motor skills of  the children limit the drawings.	The Kid Pics pictures allow us  to really see what the child intended on drawing.  This gives us a better view of the child's understanding.  Here the children  can also practice their writing skills.

Title: The Great Sequoia Trees 
Date:  March 28, 2002

Time Block: Group Time
Age Group: Kindergarten
Group Size: 22 Children
Curriculum: Science and Math

National Educational Technology Standards: PI 9, PI 10

Michigan Essential Goals and Objectives for Science Education: C2, C6, R2, PME1, PME2

Michigan Mathematics Curriculum Standards: 1.1, 2.3, 2.5, 3.6, 4.9, 4.10

Learning Objectives:
1. To practice measuring by finding the length around their tree trunks with a piece of string.
2. To improve comparison skills by talking about the difference between their trees and the Sequoia tree.
3. To improve graphing concepts by creating a graph of the different sizes of their trees.

Materials:
 Printout of pictures and facts of Sequoia trees from Internet: 
  http://library.thinkquest.org/J002415/Famous_Trees/famous_trees.html
 String
 Scissors
 Chart paper
 Small cut out squares from paper

Motivation:
 “Today we are going to take a walk to Levagood Park to visit our trees.  We are also going to measure how wide our tree is with some string.  Then, when we come back, we will see how wide our strings are.”

Procedure:
 1. Take children for walk to Levagood Park. 
 2. Tell the children to find the trees they adopted.
 3. Help each child measure around the trunk of the tree with string.  Cut the string and have the child hold his piece of string.
 4. When back in the room, tape the string on an index card and write the child's name on the card.
 5. Tell the children, “We are going to measure our string using the tiles in the hallway.  We are going to see how many tiles wide our trees are.”
 6. Go in to the hallway.  Take turns helping each child lay his string on the floor straight.  Allow the child to count how many tiles long his string is.  Write the number on the index card.
 7. Back in the room, display a large sheet of paper on the chalkboard.  Write each child's name on the bottom of the chart.  Tell the students, “Now we are going to graph our strings to see who has the widest and the skinniest tree.”
 8. Call each child up individually.  Help them count out the correct number of squares for how many tiles their string was.  Help the child glue their squares onto the chart paper over their name.
 9. When the chart is complete, ask, “Which tree trunk was the widest?”     “How do you know?”  “Which tree trunk was the skinniest?”  “What is the normal size of our tree trunks?” 
 10. Bring in pictures of the Great Sequoia trees from the Internet and the fact sheet of Sequoia trees from the Internet. 
 11. Tell the students, “I knew of some trees over in California that are VERY big.  These trees are so big that you can even drive a car through it.  These trees are called Sequoia trees.  Are any of our trees that big?”  Show the students the pictures.
 12. Tell the students, “I thought it would be interesting to find out how wide these trees are.  I went looking on the Internet and I found a website that gave me all of these pictures and told me how wide the biggest Sequoia tree was.  I found out that the fattest Sequoia tree is 113 tiles long.  We are going to see how long that is.”
 13. Go out in to the hallway and count out 113 tiles.  Measure with some string and cut the string to the correct length.
 14. Take children outside and make a big circle.  Have every child hold a piece of the string and stretch the string out into a big circle.  Tell the students, “This is how wide a Great Sequoia tree is.  Imagine a very big tree that is as wide as this circle.  Think of how big that would be!”  Allow the children to think and express their ideas about the tree.

Closure:
 Display chart and Sequoia pictures in the room for the children to look at.
 
 
 

Counting the number of tiles.	Who's tree is fatter?

Our chart of all our tree's widths.	Cody showed that his tree was 4 tiles long and Megan's tree was 11 tiles long.