Trippo Mondo

I'm still on a quest for useful educational apps for my Droid. We had fun with Trippo Mondo-- Solana translated a phrase in Russian and then sent it to me by email. Nice tool for language learning and would be fun in a class with ELLs of different language backgrounds for community building activities, translating, etc.

My First Prezi!

Made my first prezi for "Creating Passionate Readers" talk! Obviously still a novice at Prezi, but see enormous potential for student presentations. Click on the link below to get the full view.

Creating a Passion for Reading on Prezi

More science!

We tried out Google Sky Map on my Droid this weekend to look at the night sky. It was pretty exciting to identify planets and constellations. We'd need more research to know what some of the other abbreviations and symbols meant. For some reason, it's even exciting to point at the setting sun or the moon and see them identified on the Droid. Solana ended up giving me some instructions on how to freeze the image to examine it more closely. I'm still challenged in looking for safe educational apps for kids on the Droid-- the Iphone is way ahead in this arena.

science lab

We turned the kitchen into a science lab this morning. Solana created a new color that she proudly named "br-black."

Childrens' books we enjoyed this summer

A friend just gave us Snakes Don't Miss Their Mothers by M.E. Kerr. I haven't had a chance to read it, but Solana couldn't put it down. (Thanks, M!)
Solana also loved The Adventures of Ook and Gluk, Dav Pilkey's new book, though I can't say it was my favorite Dav Pilkey oeuvre. I guess it's hard to top Captain Underpants.
We both loved Bella and Bean, a book I saw reviewed in A Year of Reading that had the usual theme of friendship, but also is one of the best picture books I've seen on the craft of writing poetry.
I really enjoyed The Storm in the Barn by Matt Phelan: a graphic novel about the Dust Bowl (better for grades 4 and up). I was a bit disappointed that there weren't more historical facts and suprised by a fantasy element. However, the story drew me in and at the same time it really captured the feeling of the dust bowl with its illustrations and dialogue. It made me ask a lot of questions about this era. It would be a great accompaniment to a unit on this topic; a good selection for struggling readers or students who are drawn to graphic novels. (published by Candlewick Press which has great titles.)
Lastly, we both loved Ghostopolis, action-packed but not too scary, about a boy's trip to a ghost world where he combats an evil villian and meets his deceased grandfather.