My husband thinks I might have a slight addiction to Pinterest, but I found a wonderful idea by Cathy Knutson at Oak Hills Elementary Media Center that she shared on her blog http://ohekidstech.blogspot.com/ that I am using on this short 2 day week in my library! We are reading the book Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy's Parade by Melissa Sweet and then creating our own book character balloons with the ipads using the free app Doodle Buddy. Cathy said she used YouDoodle, but I absolutely love how easy Doodle Buddy is to use.
After reading the book and pausing to talk about all of the wonderful teachable moments (like marionettes are a fancy word for puppets, what are immigrants, and how do ideas grow from something small to something so large) the students gathered at the tables to create their own book character floats.
