In December the first grades did an author study on Eric Carle. A part of their study was to rewrite one of his books. For the art work they finger painted papers with bright colors and then used these papers to cut out small pieces to make a picture for the class book. Mr. Veri drew an outline for each page to give the students a guide. The books turned out beautifully! I was so impressed I wanted to turn them into digital stories so they could be shared with everyone! I decided to do a little experimenting and made each story using a different program. 

Moving Train Moving Train What do you See?

I made Mrs. Simpson's with Photostory3. The children narrated their page. I added a little Christmas music to it but it only plays on the last slide. I went back to edit that and to add a title slide but the file was corrupt and I couldn't do anymore editing. I didn't want to start over so here it is without the Cover slide and complete music.

Click on the link below to see Rudolph Rudolph What Do You See?

Mrs. Yaple's class rewrote the Mixed up Chameleon. For this story I used a free program called Smilebox. The design I used only allowed 20 slides so I have written out the beginning and ending of the story and included it here;

The Mixed-Up Chameleon Story Adapted by Mrs. Yaple's First Graders On a shiny green leaf sat a small green chameleon. It moved onto a brown tree and turned brownish. You could hardly see it. When the chameleon was hungry he sat still and waited, only moving its eyes UNTIL it spotted a fly. He quickly stuck out his tongue and caught the fly. How boring! The chameleon wished his life were different. I wish...

Make a Smilebox slideshow

The chameleon became very mixed up. All he wanted to do was catch a fly. I WISH I COULD BE MYSELF. And his wish came true. The End