Tried It Tuesday: PicMonkey

Sorry I've been MIA for the past week.  I was really enjoying my February break at home with my sweet little girl.  Check out my sweet Valentine!!!

I'm super excited to link up with my BBB Holly for her weekly linky party Tried It Tuesday. I know that it's Wednesday, but I actually did try this yesterday, but just didn't get to blog about it!

This is a linky party where you write about anything that you have "tried".  It can be from school, home, family, food... really anything!  I love seeing what new things all of my blogger friends have tried!

So this post is really a spin off of Amy's of the Babbling Box's post from last week's linky party.  She wrote about using PicMonkey.com to have her kiddos create pictures with quotes and then blog about it.  Holy Cow!!!!  Why didn't I think of that? I love using PicMonky personally.  It's actually how I put my blog address on my pictures that I post here on my blog, but I never thought of using it with my kids! After reading Amy's post last week, I knew that I needed to figure out a way to use this in my classroom!

Enter yesterday...We have been working on our government lapbooks for the better part of a month between snow days, extended math lessons, and February break.

We finally finished them on Monday and I knew that I wanted my kids to blog about their learning on Tuesday.  As they were getting their laptops out, I remembered Amy's post and shifted gears right then!  I modeled everything we did as the kids did it, which is always a little challenging, but definitely helpful.  We used Google Junior to find an image that represented the government (they have added images to the safe search, YAY!).  Then we went to Brainy Quote and found a quote about the government that went with the picture we chose.  Then enter Pic Monkey.  I showed them how to upload the picture and then add text and then I let them go to town playing with the effects.  They had a blast and made some very cool pictures!

Here are a few of the edited pictures

I love how he changed the font color so you could see the words depending on where they are on the picture.

Next we had to learn how to upload a picture to our blogs, which we had never done before.  Again another challenge, especially when my picture wouldn't upload (oh technology)! Then they had to write about what they learned in their study of the government.  They finished their blogs today and then they had to comment on two other blog posts.

One other cool thing about this lesson, was that one of our district technology specialists was in the building and peeked in to see what we were doing and was pretty impressed with our blogging and such!  I love being able to show off how I'm using my grant in my class!