Dear Santa Doodle PicCollage

Today my students and I tried some more app smashing!  I always have the students brainstorm what they want for Christmas, and we write a quick little letter to Santa.  Instead of doing the work on paper this year, my colleague suggested I try the iPad.  Genius!  Here's how we did it!

(Half the class had an iPad, the other half was working on another literacy activity)
1.  Draw a picture of what they want, using Doodle Buddy.  Save to camera roll.
2.  Open Pic Collage and import their picture.
3.  Choose some holiday or festive "wrapping paper" from the background choices.
4.  Add text,  using sight words and phonetic spelling, "Can I have ________?"
5  I typed "Dear Santa" for each student, and they typed "Love," and their name.
6. Students could change fonts and move the text around until they liked how it looked.
7.  Save to camera roll.

I later uploaded all the work to Google Drive, then opened them on my desktop computer and sent them to the color printer to hang up for parents and others to see.  I will also share them via email to parents.

Some of their phonetic spelling is awesome!  Sometimes the iPad used auto-correct, and then their sentences were kind of weird.  So next time, I would turn off auto-correct if possible!  I plan to write the "adult spelling" on their papers that are hanging in the hall.  About 60% asked for Xbox.  Hmmmm... go figure.

Another suggestion would be to get PicCollage open ahead of time, and type the "Dear Santa" and set up the template, so they just have to open the app and add their own sentence with the picture.  Either way, I had to touch each iPad to finish the text and then help them save, before uploading to Drive.

Now I can email their letters to Santa!  How slick is that!?!  Happy Holidays!

UPDATE 12/17:  Now that students use Seesaw, we added voice to each project, too!  Students uploaded the PicCollage item into Seesaw and pressed the record button to read their message to Santa.  With Seesaw, you can print their project with a QR code that can be scanned to access their recording.  I skipped the Google Drive step listed above because Seesaw makes it so easy to print.  It's a great way to share with families.