The Teacher Toolbox

Miss Emily usually arises between 5am and 5:30 and it is my job to entertain her so the rest of the house can sleep. This morning we had a nice father/daughter moment when we composed a ‘fill in the gaps’ poem.

It needs to be noted that there was a lot of soft chuckles as we remembered some recent ‘terms of endearment’

My Dad Calls Me

My dad calls me Emily ThumTHucka

My dad calls me Missy

My dad calls me Hungry

My dad calls me Toad

My dad calls me Noisy Girl

My dad calls me Tonka Jim Jo

My dad calls me Sleepy Head

My dad calls me a pain in the bum.

My dad calls me Mischief

My dad calls me Miss Chatterbox

My dad calls me Thirsty

My dad calls me His Little Girl

My dad calls me Evil Incarnate

My dad calls me, ‘My Precious’

My dad calls me his Happy Shelia

My dad calls me his Baby.

I think my dad forgets my name sometimes.

I’ve been playing Mini Ninjas with Mr 10 for about a week now. During this time we’ve been taking a few screen shots of the action using Fraps 99. Above is my first comic using Mini Ninjas as the machinima engine.

Thoughts welcome.

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I find using scaffolds a great way to introduce children to alternative ways of writing poetry and exploring creative process.

Here is my lastest scaffold

The Haunted House
_______________s,
_______________s
___________
Door ____________ slowly open,
______________ them in
a ____________,
a ____________,
a distant _(animal) (noise it makes)
_________,
________,
_____________ comes to a _____________ halt
and ____________!
________(sound) __________(sound) _________(sound)
Door ___________s shut
Only to open when the next unsuspecting
______________ comes along.

And you can explore the who process with your students at this page The Haunted House Sound Poem.

Enjoy

Writing ’sound poems’ is always heaps of fun! Today I’ve started creating a word bank of examples of onomatopoeia and I need your help. I’ve put together a writable document that you can use as it exists but it would be appreciated if you added a few examples of your own to help me out. Please consider spending five minutes or so working on this for me. Example of Onomatopoeia

Over the last couple of months I’ve been given a chance to tinker with the private beta of the video game making software Atmosphir. Wow! This software is so powerful and so easy! Check out the video to get an idea of what it can do and sign up to wait for the beta to go public on the Atmosphir Waiting List.

I introduced the software to a group of kids a while back and they were very impressed. In fact the woman who hired me thanked me for getting her ‘a few brownie points’ with her own kids because they loved it so much.

My brother Damien died when I was eight. He died on his forth birthday and today is his anniversary. Ever since then, whenever I find myself lamenting getting older or am going through a bit of a rough patch, I just think that every day I get is one more than he did.

How lucky are we to be  alive on this amazing planet! What are you doing with the time you’ve been granted? What are you doing to make sure you leave the ‘campsite’  just a little bit better than when you came?

I once heard an interview with the Kiwi songwriter Neil Finn where he talked about how a ‘mistake’ can lead to a whole new song. As I tinker with new software I often find, when something is not quiet going the way I plan, I end up exploring a whole new tangent and produce something completely unexpected. I’m not saying that these tangets are worthwhile, but they are often ideas that would never have been produced without the initial mistake.

Recently my son and I have been experimenting with a plugin for the Steam games Half Life 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2 called Garry’s Mod. The mod allows you to manipulate your objects and characters to create scenes independent of the gameplay. It is what the Machinima community use to make Half Life 2 movies like Civil Protection.

Initialy I found it really hard to pose this character in a chair and that sparked the idea for this single panel cartoon.

So where do we encourage our students to make mistakes and then to value them?

It’s school holidays here in Oz so I knocked up this puzzle for my son to test out. The problem works well and it is sufficiently challenging. Have fun solving this puzzle.

Happy Holiday Season to all.

From the realm of  ‘use it or lose it’ here is a collection of free problem solving apps for the Itouch. My family and I get a fair amount of use and enjoyment out of them. They are free from the Itunes App Store. Enjoy!!!

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CatchaMouse – Toobz-Free – LogPuzzle Free – TanZen Lite – ZentominoLE – Ragdoll Lite – Cross Free – Fifteen – Peg Quest – Magnetic Lite – CrackCode – PegJump – BrainTeaser – Hedge Maze – Dynamite Lite – and the one I shelled out $1.19 for… Nintaii.