Reception kids like to come the computer lab. Enthusiasm all over. My main problem is the fact that the kids cannot read (or write) yet.
There you go with menus and file names etc. Using Keynote quite a bit with older kids, I was thinking about using some of the nice
elements of the program with my students. They tackled the PYP unit "Home" and I had the kids made a simple house with the shapes
available. Then I introduced colors, fills, and borders. Worked so well! They never knew they were working on a slide.
My Grade2 PYP class studied the POI unit Space. Hurrah, finally a good chance to use some of the best Open Source software out there. We used Google Earth, with the layers for Mars/Moon etc, and explored the tours that are available. Got them hooked there!
Next we tried Celestia, a 3D space simulation program (see some featured screenshots here)
and Stellarium (planetarium) - explore it all here, both excellent programs to visualize the objects that kids talk about.
To finish it all off, students had to become creative, and create an iPhoto slideshow, with all planets from our sun. They also had to create "Space music/sounds", using Garageband, and import that as background music into their slideshow.
You can imagine; we all had great fun (and I am soo lucky to have headsets for all the iMacs in my lab :-)
