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Winter Themed Technology Activities Your Class Will Love

Winter themed technology activities your students will love: Ideas for Laptops, Chromebooks and iPads

Are you looking for some FUN winter themed technology activities?

Winter is here! I have compiled a list of FUN techie activities your students are sure to love while also keeping your classroom activities academic.



Using ReadWriteThink's Trading Card Maker, have students create a trading card for a character that they read about in a winter themed book. Some ideas include but aren't limited to: Santa, Rudolph, Scrooge, Frosty the Snowman, Elsa, etc.. This is a great activity for teaching character traits. The final product can be printed out and looks just like a trading card!


This website is SO simple:


Upload an image straight to the site. Then fill in the empty fields. Finally, click "Finish Editing" and Print. That's it! I like ReadWriteThink's websites because it allows students to save their work so they can go back and continue working on it at a later time. Get this: They don't even have to sign into the website! If they choose to save, the website will generate a file to download. The next time you want to work on it, click on the Open tab at the top and upload the file.

This tool is also an iPad app that you can find HERE.



Using ABCya's Create a Snowman website, have students design a snowman:


For K-1 students you could have them choose to print their creation and write winter related words or a sentence at the bottom of the page. An option for upper grades would be to save their creation and import it into a program like PowerPoint, Word, Pages, Google Doc etc. and have them type a sentence or paragraph at the bottom about any prompt you give your students. It would be really fun to pull the images into a collaborative Google Slides presentation. Each child could add their snowman to one of the slides and add some text to go along with the image. Add a title slide entitled Our Digital Book of Snowmen and email it home to parents and/or embed it on your class blog or website! Your students will have a blast looking at their classmates' creations and reading their paragraphs.
Finished Example


Use Scratch to have your students code a scene about animal adaptations that occur during the fall↠winter season. Here is an example a third grader created last year. Her teacher wanted her to show examples of migration and hibernation. This was a beginner coder who only had 30 minutes to complete this assignment. If she had more time, then she could have added more to her scene. 

Click the green flag. Press the right arrow key to activate the bird. Press the down arrow key to activate the squirrel.

                   

Do your students like Choose Your Own Adventure stories? If so, they will LOVE writing their own winter themed story using the free web tool, Inklewriter. Creative writing and critical thinking will both be practiced during this lesson. Not only will your students enjoy creating their own interactive story, they will also have a blast reading their peers' stories!


The site provides easy to understand tutorials to help students build their stories.

For those of you who have access to iPads, last year I blogged about an activity called Synonym Snowman. Since then I have found a Make a Snowman app that I like even better BECAUSE you can add your own background. 

The FREE Make a Snowman app is super easy to use and saves your image straight to the camera roll. Students can take a picture of anything or make an image in another app and set it as the background. Then they build and customize a snowman using the different tools included.
In the example below I app smashed using Schoolkit Math ManipulativesMake a Snowman, and YakIt Kids. Get creative and use your imagination as to what students set as their background. I simply used Schoolkit Math to make an arrangement of fractions and took a screenshot. I added the snowman in Make a Snowman. Then I made the image come alive and talk as I explained my thinking using YakIt Kids. Enjoy☃

Fractions from Julie on Vimeo.


Another idea for the iPad is to have students use the app PicCollage or PicKids to create an acrostic poster on a word related to winter. Note: The word "winter" was a HARD one! If you are not familiar with how to use this highly versatile and FREE app then I encourage you to check out THIS tutorial by Erintegration. If you want to take it a step further, have your students use an app like Lumyer to add the snow effect. You can save it as a movie or as an animated gif like the example below:

Create an animated acrostic poem about winter using the FREE apps PicCollage and Luymer

These animated posters could easily be uploaded to your class blog/website or added to a collaborative Google Presentation.

UPDATE since I wrote this post! This app has been changed to Toontastic 3D

Here is one more idea for the iPad. Using the FREE app Toontastic, have students research and create a cartoon about different holiday traditions. Here is a quick example I threw together using just one scene in the app (you can have up to 5 different scenes!):

IMG 2060 from Julie on Vimeo.

There are many different "winter/holiday" characters to choose from:



They even have a Snow Day Escapade scene and a North Pole scene:



Another idea is to have students upload their own image as a background!

Do you have access to a 3D printer? If so, have your students design a Christmas ornament or a symmetrical snowflake in Tinkercad (or whatever software you use) and give it to someone special for the holiday season! To give your students a little inspiration, share 3D Printing Ninja's Top 3D Printed Ornaments of 2015. Amazing!


If you like to carry out activities in Google Drive then you HAVE to check out my latest product that I posted to my TpT Store last week: Design an Ornament in Google Drive. Students individually make an ornament in Google Drawing, save it as a png and import it into a collaborative Google Slides presentation (1 slide) to decorate their class tree. Makes a cute poster or holiday card that you can send home to parents!
Click HERE


To see this product in more detail, check out this promo video:


Students would LOVE to help you decorate the classroom for the holiday season with this Design a Holiday Light in Google Drawing™ resource.

Click HERE

I also have two different collaborative digital books in Google Slides. Students work on a collaborative presentation to create a class book about a writing topic related to winter holidays or snowmen. These "digital books" can be emailed to parents or embedded into your class blog/website. You could also print to make an actual book or turn into a cute bulletin board!

Click HERE
Click HERE
   

Have fun with your students this winter!





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