Kid Pix Ideas From My Friends
When I started fooling around with Kids Pix Deluxe Studio I asked everyone on several mail lists if they could share their favorite ideas with me. Everyone was more than happy to share and I thank them.
Here is the summary of what they sent in.
I took the child's picture with a digital camera attached to the computer. (It saved as a .pict file from the software) I put the photo file on the child's disk and when they went to their computer, they opened the photo using KID PIX (of course!) They used the eraser to erase all the stuff behind them, leaving only their face, and drew an endangered animal body around their face. We printed these and the children later wrote in class why the people of the world needed to protect them! They really identified!
You could use the truck tool and the oval and cut a smaller picture to which
they add the body. That is harder though.......
We use the same technique when we do community helpers and the children draw
what they are going to be. I usually get lots of police officers, firefighters,
and pilots because of the stamps that are available.
The picture can also be used to add to an author page.
Along the lines of the nutrition template, I have done a dental hygiene Exercise
with kindergarten. I found a picture of a tooth and scanned it, saving as
a bmp. You could use clipart or even draw the outline of the tooth. Then
I had the kids search through the stamps and find food that was helpful for
you teeth. They then would stamp those foods on the tooth. In a variation
I placed stamps of healthy and unhealthy foods outside the tooth and had
them use the moving van to move the healthy food onto the tooth, but leave
the unhealthy food outside.
Frogs-If you hold the shift key down it will make a straight line so first
we draw those. Then they go ahead and make their pictures (We've talked about
the stages and reviewed prior to this activity). Most of my kids will go
ahead and label what they make but there are a few who won't. We have a lab
with 25 computers but this could also be done as a guided reading center.
I do a lot of computer stuff that way and have the kids rotate through during
the week. If I do something like this as a center, I usually have the kids
work with a partner. As for the timing, it depends. I have some that will
finish in 15 minutes and then there will be my stragglers who will need to
finish later on the room computer. I would say that in all, our lab period
(45 minutes)will be more than enough time. I'll do a brief 10 minute or so
intro and review some things (the straight lines, the circle tool that will
already make it a solid color, etc..) and then they'll get to work.
I went to the window where you can draw. I drew a picture of a frog then
I typed a statement about frogs. I saved it I and named it frog. I drew about
4 different frog pictures and saved each on. Then I went to the slide show
and clicked on the first truck I clicked on the small square another window
will come up with the titles of my frog pictures I just picked a frog picture
and it went to the truck. I did that for four trucks. Then I went to the
music note and it gave each one a little intro of music. There is another
figure on the truck and I think that is for opening up each slide in a different
way. I know there has to be a better way to describe how to do this. I know
if I can figure it out you can. Let me know when you figure out how to do
the movies and other stuff. I am sure I could probably find some student
to show me how!
1. They wrote Haiku, typed it into Kids Pix and illustrated it.
2. They made self-portraits and other pictures of favorite things/activities
for a Kid Pix Slide Show about themselves.
3. They made a class slide show about the animals they were researching for
scenes. Each kid had his/her own page and had to illustrate it and write
facts about the animal.
4. They made posters for Earth Day to convince others to save our planet.
Classify: mammals/birds
Addition problems using stamps.
Slideshows are very easy to make. The first thing you have to do is create
the slides to put in the show. You draw, paint, write etc. and save each
individual picture. When you have 2-3 slides complete, you can put them into
a slideshow. I tell the kids to save their pictures with some identifying
name and number them so they are easy to find (dog1,dog2,etc.). I believe
that with Kid pix you can't have any spaces or punctuation in the filename.
Pictures will be saved as bitmaps (bmp).
When you are ready to start creating a slideshow open the slideshow option
from the main menu. At the first truck, click on the small square icon in
the left lower corner to place your picture. You will see a list of all the
pictures you have saved. Select the one you want to go first. This is where
numbering your pictures helps. The middle icon in the truck is for adding
sound. You can use one of theirs or record your own voice or sound. The third
icon is for the transition - how it moves from one screen to the next. When
you have selected a picture, sound and transition, you will see the icons
are now colored. That helps you keep track of where you are.
Continue to add pictures, sounds and transitions until you have included
all your saved work. To view your slideshow, click on the single arrow at
the bottom of the screen(to the right of the dynamite). The other arrow will
continuously play your slideshow until you stop it. Save your slideshow using
a name that describes what is contained in the show. Slide shows are saved
with the extension .sho.
The sliding bar below each truck allows you to set how much time each slide
is viewed. Some sounds will take longer than others. This is helpful if you
have a lot of words on the screen. You can add up to 99 different pictures
to a slideshow. I have had individual students create a slideshow and have
done classroom slideshows as well. For very young students it is probably
better to have them each do one or two pictures and then save them as one
slideshow.
One neat thing to do is fairly easy. Have the students write poems. Choose
"Alphabet Text" from the Goodies menu. Then they type their poem in a simple
sentence. "I like ice cream.....or....Mom is great.........." Then click
"ok"Go to the paintbrush and draw a picture. The sentence will appear on
the screen as their picture. They can drag the paintbrush several times and
the sentence will continue.
I begin early in the year (October) to create some slide shows. I usually
do the 3 pigs, or 3 bears. Each child is assigned a part of the story (1
- Title, 2 - This is the first pig, 3 - this is the second pig, 4 - this
is the third pig, 5 - the first pig built a house of straw,.........) I do
the whole story like this and cut it into strips so the children have a "record"
of their assignment......
The children create the picture and then (they LOVE this) record their voice
"reading" the assigned sentence As the children finish their pictures and
save them on their disks, I save each one again on the hard drive of a computer
in a clearly marked folder. When I have gathered all the pictures together
in the folder, I open Slide Show. When you see all the little trucks, you
are in the right place. Now what you have to do is to click on the first
little button in the truck's cargo bay. The dialogue box appears to ask what
picture you want to put in. Find the clearly marked folder. Click on the
first picture (1 - Title) and click OK (or is it add?) The little truck now
has a little thumbnail of the title. Click on the second truck. Click
on the first button in that truck (looks like a picture). Find picture 2
(2 - Pig 1). Click on it and click OK (or double click on the picture name).
Repeat, repeat, ....... until all are done.
At the very bottom of the screen are 4 (I think) buttons. Click on the triangle
that points sideways. You will now see the 3 pigs story unfold before your
eyes, read by your munchkins.
SAVE it before you close!!!!!! You have 3 choices for saving. ! - you can
save it as a slide show, which means you can open it at a later time and
edit it, add to it, or change it. 2 - You can save it as a stand- alone,
which means you can put it on disk, and ANYONE can run the show, even if
they DON'T have Kid Pix. This way is UNEDITABLE. 3 - You can save it as a
quick time movie and use it in other applications. This way is UNEDITABLE.
You can save it all three ways if you want. It sounds like a lot of work,
most of it is theirs. I have transferred my slide shows to video and send
them home for all to see - even if they DON't have a computer. Very positive
responses. There are more advanced applications of this (which I will save
for a later post)
Math Activities Using Kid Pix
Counting
Counting Small Numbers - Use the shift, option and control keys to enlarge
the stamps. Stamp several onto the page and count as you go. Use the number
stamps to stamp a number on each object on the screen. Teddy Bears work really
well. At largest size, their bellies are just the right size for a number.
Counting in Tens - Use the star paintbrush to paint a large numb of stars
onto the screen. Select the pencil tool and a color, and then have the students
tick off 10 of the stars together. Draw a loop around the group of
10. Repeat this with a different color until all possible groups of 10 have
been made. The fill tool can be used to further highlight the different groups.
Use the number and alphabet stamps to write how many tens and how many ones
areleft, then the actual number. You can make some wonderful number charts
using this technique. The other stamps can be used instead of the paintbrush
tool.
Sorting and Classifying
This idea is credited to Dorothy Laufer. She writes "One of the activities
I like to do with KIDPIX is to have the students use the moving truck (they
have to use size judgements for this) to move graphics around so that they
are classifying, placing all the small things together, placing a picture
that goes with another picture or word...etc."
Operations
Slide Shows -We did an addition of 2 and 3 fish, making them swim together
to make 5 fish. You can use the same idea to make a counting slideshow. Perhaps
I'll get around to putting one up soon. (you need Kid Pix Companion or Kid
Pix Studio for this one.
Math Activities Using Kid Pix
Line Maze - It is pretty simple to create a maze, and it is a great idea
for hand-eye co-ordination. Use the line tool to draw borders, identify a
starting point (e.g. bike stamp) and a finishing point (e.g. the house stamp),
and have the child use a pencil to draw the path through the maze.
Informal Maze -
For an easier activity along the line of the above, just stamp a few trees
in the middle of the screen and have the students draw a line from the starting
point to the finishing point without touching the screen.
If the above mazes are all to hard, simply stamp a starting and finishing
point on the screen and don't worry about obstacles.
Depending on which letter we were working on....I'd set up a graphic that
started with that letter and have the kids paint it....they could also stamp,
write, or type the beginning sound and or word.
You can take the letter you are working on and have the kids write, type
or stamp it and then find stamps that begin withh the same sound and have
the stamp those pictures. You can make a nice alphabet slideshow this way.
Numbers... stamp numbers and next to them stamp the correct number of one
of the stamps.......or make 5 circles using the circle tool......,We made
a spring counting book using the slideshow option. First we listed spring
things....I wrote them on a chart and drew a small picture next to them.....then
each child picked a number (numbers 1-20) and first on paper they wrote their
number then the number word...then they picked a spring thing and drew that
many...after their plan on paper was complete they went to the computer and
recreated it on the computer.....we recorded their pages and made a slide
show complete with applause and all their names on the last page.
Addition practice..
Yell students a number sentence....or have them written on cards.....and
the student has to illustrate it using kid pix......example number sentence
is 2 + 3 = 5 and the student may stamp 2 suns and then 3 more and then stamp
a 5....you can also tell a story and have them represent it and then figure
out and write the number sentence....this activity works great if you have
a lab.......
We made a Spring counting book using the slideshow......First we made a list
of spring
things......birds...tulips.....bees.....buds........ants......sun.....clouds.....raindrops....etc....then
each child picked a number from 1-20....Then they planned out their page
using paper, pencil and crayons.....they wrote their number then the number
word and then the spring object they chose.....example 1 one sun then they
drew a sun.......when their paper was finished and edited they went to Kid
Pix and wrote their number with the pencil tool...then used the typewriter
to type the number word and spring thing....then they used whatever tools
they needed to draw. I encouraged them to make them as colorful as possible
since it would be on a slideshow...not printed out....then I saved them and
put them all into the slideshow and then I recorded their voice saying "one
sun".......and they picked the transition....we still need to make a cover....and
on the last page we put "The end! and everyone typed their name!
Graphics-you can import graphics from other programs. Just copy them onto
the Clipboard. When in Kid Pix, go to Edit and Paste. You could also import
photographs from programs and scanners.
Changing Stamp Sizes- There are four sizes to stamps. The smallest is the
regular stamp. Then, if you push the "option" key it gets bigger. If you
press the "Shift" key, it gets bigger, and if you press "Option" and "Shift"at
the same time, it gets even bigger.
Editing Stamps- If you double click on a stamp, it will take you to the Stamp
Editor. You can use it to make new stamps. In addition, you can always go
back to the original stamp.
Maze- You first fill in the entire screen, with a solid color. Then the children
pick out two stamps that were related. Perhaps the sun and the moon. Santa
and a gift. They placed those on opposite sides of the screen. Next they
used the line tool, made it the widest width, and holding down the shift
key so the lines were straight, they made the path from the first stamp to
the second. Of course, you would make it with many right angles and all over
the screen so it wasn't automatic. After they had the path completed, they
went back to their 90 degree angles and made many other paths for confusion.
They never overlapped paths. When these were finished we printed them, laminated
them, and bound them into a book. Now we have a book of mazes that the children
use grease pens on to solve each other's maze. With a quick wipe of a Baby
Wipe they are ready for the next person.
Skills- mouse skills, directional, software knowledge- Math Objective For students to understand the concept of greater than and less than with numbers 1-20.
Note- The numbers used for this lesson can be altered to meet the ability
level of students.
Materials- Index cards, Kid Pix, or other beginning paint, draw program,
computer, printer and printer paper
Procedures-
1.Have students write two numbers (1-20) on a card. Collect the cards, shuffle
them, and then pass them out to each student.
2.Have the students write the less than or greater than sign in-between the
numbers on their cards.
3.Open Kid Pix or other paint/draw program.
4.Each student will then create a picture in Kid Pix which illustrates the
relationship of the two numbers. For example, on a card with the numbers
and 17 and 19, students would use the stamps or draw tool to write the numbers,
place the correct number sign, < or >, between them, and then use the
stamps
or draw original art to place the correct number of items under each
number.
Encourage them to decorate their math problem thematically
5.Save their designs and print them out for a classroom display.
Additional ideas:
1. To show big, bigger, biggest (sizing the stamps)
2. symmetry (use symmetrical caterpillar option under Wacky Brush Tool)
3. To show geometric shapes
4. To show patterns (make a quilt)
5. To graph (bar graphs, pictograms, line graphs)
6. Have the teacher use it as a Show Me Tool (e.g. Show me you understand
10% of 50, Show me what 0.5 L of Coke looks like, Show me a picture for this
equation etc.)
7. Use the Wacky Brush Option (dominoes tool) to play some of the games from
Box Cars and One Eyed Jacks or create your own game with them.
8. Create templates that your kids can use for math puzzles. You could have
24 disks with 24 different math challenges. The students solve and then go
on to the next one. An idea might be to get an older buddy to create a simple
math challenge for a younger buddy.
Math Story Problems
As students work through this activity, they are talking and visualizing
math as well as planning ahead, identifying the important information and
breaking the problem down into smaller steps.
Place students in groups of two. Have each group create a math story problem
about a situation that would interest their age group. Then have each group
visualize how the problem would look if it were explained and solved using
pictures.
The students should storyboard their story problems by sketching the
illustrations and indicating what they will say for each illustration. Next-
have them draw these pictures using Kid Pix and create a slide show with
voice overlay using Kid Pix Companion.
Geometric Shapes
Arrange students into groups of two and assign each group a different geometric
shape (such as square, rectangle, circle, equilateral triangle, pentagon,
hexagon, etc.). Tell each group that it is responsible for designing a short
tutorial about its assigned geometric shape. by using pictures, written text,
and voice overlay. These slide shows will be used as tutorials or next year's
math students.
Students must:
a. Write a statement that describes the properties of their assigned shape.
Example -- A square is quadrilateral with sides of equal length.
A square has four right angles and two pairs of parallel sides.
b. Draw and label their assigned shape.
c. Write a statement describing how they would find the perimeter for their
assigned shape. exp.--To find the perimeter of a square, multiply the length
of one side of the square by 4.
d. Draw and label a figure that illustrates how one would find the perimeter
for their assigned shape. Example -- Perimeter of a Square = length of one
side * 4 The perimeter of this square is 2 x 4 or 8 units of length.
e. Write a statement describing how they would find the area for their assigned
shape. Example -- To find the area of a square, square the length of a
side.
f. Draw and label a figure
that illustrates how one would find the area for their assigned shape. Example
-- Area of a Square = (length) 2. The area of this square is 2 x 2 or 4 square
units of area.
g. Storyboard this information indicating what will be drawn on each frame,
what text will be printed on each frame and what voice overlay will accompany
each frame.
Book Reports
Procedures
1.Read a story/novel to your class, or have students use a book they've read
themselves. This works well using a story from your Reading book.
2.Have each student use the word processor in Kid Pix to write the title
of the story, a brief summary-just a few sentences, and their name somewhere
on the page.
3.Have each student illustrate the story using either stamps, original art,
or a combination of both.
4.Print the pictures out to share with classmates.
Extension: You can place your students' pictures in Kid Pix Slide Show. This
makes a great presentation to share with parents at Open House or Parent
Days. These slide shows are also wonderful when transferred to videotape,
especially for sharing school-wide in schools with closed circuit television
systems.
Alternate Activity: Have students illustrate the story in Kid Pix. A word
processor can be used to write a more detailed summary or book report. Import
the Kid Pix illustration into the word processing document. List Making Use
the stamps from Kid Pix 2 to make a list of theme words. eg Toys, food, transport
etc. Children make up own lists. Write words next to each stamp.
Partners.-Alphabetical Order Use ABC Alphabetical Text function to create
shapes in alphabetical order in Kid Pix 2.
Compound Words Use stamps and text to make and draw compound words from Reading
books. eg car + port = carport.
Each child chooses a favorite book and creates a picture that went along
with the book. Next they write what their favorite books were and why they
liked them
Random Ideas
Use the stamps-
1.to create number stories.
2.to make a border for a picture or your writing to make rebus stories (using
simple sentences typed by the teacher, find a stamp that can go in the
blank)
3.match the stamp picture with a word (this is a pre-made file which the
teacher has to create.
4. With a partner: one partner chooses two different stamps and makes two
sets. The other person must use the alphabet stamps (numbers) to show the
addition sentence. This process could also be reversed. The teacher could
also control this if certain addition facts were written on a slip of paper,
students pick one and create the picture and the addition sentence on the
screen then print it out. This could be used to create a book about addition
facts for your classroom.
5.Make a map.
6. Draw self-portraits. If you had them do one at the beginning of the year
and one at the end it would probably be interesting to compare.