1st Grade--Post Laura Numeroff activities

Last week pairs of first grade students read 5 different If You... books by Laura Numeroff. I had a selection of 7 choices for them. The choice of reading 5 of 7 books had to do with timing and number of copies of each book as well as extension activities they had time to complete.

To wrap-up the reading I asked each student to create a party plan for one of the book characters. I gave them a  party planning guide to start. It asked them to think about the character's personality and likes, citing specific examples from the character appeared in. Based on that information they had to come up with a party theme, food and activities.

Then they moved to the iPad. The first step was to create an invitation to the party. They used the Card Shop app for that activity. I had used Kid Card app for activities in the past (it's free, Card Shop is not). However, the Kid Card app had ads that often appeared on top of the buttons students needed to use in order to design their card. Also, the app crashed frequently.

Once they finished the invitation students made a shopping list for themselves using Doodle Buddy. I told them they could use a combination of writing, typing, and stickers, whatever worked for them. Most chose to write with their fingers.

Finally, they used Drawing Pad to create a "photo" of one scene from the party. We spent a lot of time talking about color and detail that would appear in an actual photo. I have some student who prefer to use the very basic 2 or 3 color stick figure approach to drawing.