Today Mrs. Brown’s kindergarten students at Holladay Elementary created videos about the frog life cycle using Pixie. I gave them a template that you can download by clicking here. First the students added their photo of their head and painted a body for it. Then they duplicated the picture three times so it would stay the same and just the frog and the speech bubble would change. For the first picture they put some stickers of frog eggs into the pond and changed the text in their speech bubble to say, “Egg.” On the second picture they put stickers of tadpoles in the pond and said, “Tadpole.” On the last picture they put stickers of adult frogs in the pond and said, “Frog.” Finally they recorded a voiceover for each picture and exported it as a movie. It was a simple activity, but it helped them review the stages in a fun way as well as learn some new computer skills. You can change the template for almost any life cycle. To see a student sample click here.

Today, kindergarten students in Ms. Hall’s class at Laburnum Elementary created Pixie videos about the four seasons. It was a complicated process, but they did just fine with it. We started with a basic template they they created themselves. It had a text box with the name of the season, a tree that they painted and a photo of their head. They duplicated that template four times. Then they changed the title of each one to be a different season: Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. Next they painted the tree and their clothing to reflect the changes in each picture. They also added stickers that related to that season. Finally they recorded their voice explaining the facts that they had learned. You can see some finished student samples here: Durell and Ayana.